A Thirty-Year-Old Prisoner Has Died in the SIZO

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

Thirty-year-old Ihor was in the SIZO on suspicion of committing a crime provided for by Article 309 of the Criminal Code of Ukraine — "illegal production, manufacture, acquisition, storage, transportation, or shipment of narcotic drugs without the intent to sell". Although the investigation into the case had been completed and transferred for hearing to the Frankivskyi District Court of the city of Lviv, neither his parents nor his fiancée were allowed to visit Ihor. Shortly before their son's death, Ihor's parents received a "malyava" (a secretly transmitted letter — Author) from other prisoners, who warned that trouble might befall their son. Ihor, the letter said, had not signed a single document or interrogation protocol, and in order to "break" him, SIZO staff were moving the boy from one cell to another and "pressuring" him (attempts to obtain a confession through illegal methods — Author). And on 23 May, Ihor's father was called by SIZO prisoners (having mobile phones in places of deprivation of liberty is prohibited, but no one hides the fact that prisoners have them) and informed that his son was dead and his body was in the morgue.

"We buried our son yesterday. But officially, the SIZO administration has not informed me to this day that Ihor is no longer among the living," Ihor's father told "VZ". "I did not receive either a written or verbal notification of my son's death." Ihor's father is convinced that his son died a violent death. He says that Ihor was placed in a so-called "press-cell," where prisoners are beaten to extract the necessary testimony or agreement to cooperate with the administration, in which, in gross violation of the legislation, an already convicted prisoner was sitting together with his son. In a complaint to the Lviv Region Prosecutor's Office, the father of the deceased even named the specific surname of this prisoner. And in the morning, the son was found dead.

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

The deputy head of the SIZO, who, without his supervisor's permission, refused to tell the "VZ" correspondent his surname, spoke of entirely different circumstances of the arrested man's death. According to this employee, Ihor was sitting in an ordinary cell for ten people. "In the evening," the officer recounted, "the arrested were taken to the baths, and five minutes later this lad died. We ourselves were frightened at first. After all, he could have died due to a fight between the prisoners. But there were no signs of a violent death on the 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. Relatives of the deceased and representatives of the prosecutor's office were present at the body's examination. Therefore, no one would have dared to falsify the causes of death."

So, perhaps Ihor's grief-stricken parents really have no reason to suspect that their son died a violent death? But it looks very strange and allows for any versions to be assumed, given the "Certificate of Cause of Death (issued for burial)" that was given to the parents of the deceased by the Bureau of Forensic Medical Examination. In the "cause of death" field, in this very important document, it is indicated: "previously not clarified". 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, was the deceased allowed to be buried before the final conclusions of the forensic medical experts were received?


Comment for "VZ"

Yevhen Zakharov, head of the "Kharkiv Human Rights Protection Group"

I have heard about the existence of "press-cells" in penal colonies. Defiant prisoners are thrown there to "re-educate" them. But mostly, suspects have confessions beaten out of them through torture in district police departments. I assume that "press-cells" may also exist in pre-trial detention centres, but without concrete evidence, this is only a conjecture.