Once again, “masks-show”?

The Kharkiv Human Rights Group received a report that on 18 March, special forces in masks and full combat gear, approximately 10 men, were brought into penal institution No. 55 (Sofiivka, Vilniansk district, Zaporizhzhia region).

They brutally beat the convicts who were in the PUN (punishment cell) and the SCU (semi-closed unit), and those sentenced to life imprisonment. According to the report, they beat them with their feet, hands, rubber batons, made them perform stretches, and shoved some with their heads into the toilet. Our informant claims that several convicts were revived with water after being beaten so that they would come to their senses. The special forces soldiers even beat the convict Striukov, who had been brought from the medical unit, and was suffering from tuberculosis. Convicts Viktor Sadovnykov and Yevhen Brusenskyi, who were in the PUN, and Ruslan Artamonov, who was in the SCU, were particularly affected.

It is also claimed that information about the beating supposedly leaked beyond the colony, and Zaporizhzhia journalists tried to get in there to meet with the convicts, but they were not let in.

We do not have the possibility to verify the cited information. Therefore, the KHPG turned to the Commissioner of the Verkhovna Rada of Ukraine for Human Rights and the Prosecutor General’s Office of Ukraine.