A thirty-year-old prisoner has died in the Lviv pre-trial detention centre

The parents of the deceased believe their son was tortured...

Thirty-year-old Ihor was being held in the pre-trial detention centre on suspicion of committing a crime under Art. 309 of the Criminal Code of Ukraine — “illegal production, manufacture, acquisition, storage, transportation or shipment of narcotic drugs without the purpose of sale”. Although the investigation of the case had been completed and it had been transferred for a hearing to the Frankivskyi District Court of the city of Lviv, neither his parents nor his fiancée were permitted to visit Ihor. Shortly before their son’s death, Ihor’s parents received a “malyava” (a secretly transmitted letter. — Auth.) from other inmates, who warned them that trouble might befall their son. The letter stated that Ihor had not signed a single document or interrogation protocol, and that in order to “break” him, the pre-trial detention centre staff were moving the boy from one cell to another and “pressuring” him (attempts to obtain a confession using illegal methods. — Auth.). And on 23 May, Ihor’s father received a call from prisoners at the pre-trial detention centre (having mobile phones in places of imprisonment is forbidden, but no one hides that prisoners have them) informing him that his son was dead and his body was in the morgue.

“We buried our son yesterday. But officially, the pre-trial detention centre administration has not yet informed me that Ihor is no longer among the living,” Ihor’s father told “VZ”. “I have not received any written or oral notification about my son’s death.” Ihor’s father is convinced that his son died a violent death. He says that Ihor had been placed in a so-called “press-cell”, where confessions or agreement to cooperate with the administration are extracted from inmates, and in which a convicted prisoner was being held along with his son, which is a gross violation of the law. In a complaint to the Lviv Region Prosecutor’s Office, the deceased’s father even named the specific surname of this prisoner. And in the morning, his son was found dead.

After the phone call from the pre-trial detention centre, the deceased’s father said, he went to the morgue, but the staff of this specific institution refused to show him his son’s body. They said they would release him for burial only after the forensic medical examination had been conducted. The next day, when his son’s body was released, the relatives saw bruises on the corpse’s legs above the knees and blue hands. And when his mother, while saying goodbye to her son, stroked his face, hair came loose from the temples of the deceased, as if someone had glued it on poorly beforehand.

The deputy head of the pre-trial detention centre, who, without his superior’s permission, refused to tell the “VZ” correspondent his surname, described completely different circumstances of the prisoner’s death. According to this employee, Ihor was being held in an ordinary cell for ten people. “In the evening,” the officer related, “the prisoners were taken to the bathhouse, and five minutes later this boy died. We ourselves were frightened at first. After all, he could have died due to a fight between prisoners. But there were no signs of a violent death on his body. This man had been behind bars for the third time for drug use, and doctors say that the boy’s liver could have simply failed. The deceased’s relatives and representatives of the prosecutor’s office were present at the examination of the body. Therefore, no one would have dared to falsify the cause of death.”

So, is it possible that Ihor’s grief-stricken parents really have no reason to suspect that their son died a violent death? However, the “Death Certificate (issued for burial)”, which was provided to the deceased’s parents by the Bureau of Forensic Medical Examination, seems very strange and allows for any version of events. In the “cause of death” column in this very important document, it is stated: “preliminarily not specified”. So why, knowing that his parents had already written a complaint demanding an investigation into the circumstances of their son’s death to the prosecutor’s office, were they allowed to bury the deceased before the final conclusions of the forensic medical experts were received?


Comment for “VZ”

Yevhen Zakharov, head of the “Kharkiv Human Rights Group”

I have heard about the existence of “press-cells” in colonies. Disobedient convicts are thrown there to “re-educate” them. But for the most part, confessions are extracted from suspects through torture while still in district police stations. I assume that “press-cells” can also exist in pre-trial detention centres, but without concrete evidence, this is only an assumption.