You're reading: Amnesty International: SBU holds at least five people in secret detention

Ukrainian authorities have imprisoned at least five people in the secret compound of the Security Service of Ukraine in Kharkiv, human rights watchdogs say in their latest report.

In a document published on Aug. 29, Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch urge officials to release the captives and investigate the abuses.

Serhiy Tkachuk, chief of staff for the head of SBU, as the security agency is known, denied that the service had a secret prison in Kharkiv, but said that they would verify the allegations about possible human rights violations.

Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch raised the issue of the secret compounds in back in July, when they published a joint report exposing torture and secret detention by both Ukrainian authorities and pro-Russian separatists in the war-torn Donbas.

Back then, the human rights watchdogs met with Anatoly Matios, Ukraine’s chief military prosecutor, and handed him a list of 16 people who were allegedly being held in Kharkiv at the time. He promised to personally oversee the investigation into the practice of secret detention, the report says.

After that, the watchdogs claim that SBU released 13 people from the said secret compound. Most of them were from the list that was handed to Matios. The General Prosecutor’s Office couldn’t be reached for a comment.

SBU’s Tkachuk said he never heard about the released people.

John Dalhuisen, Amnesty International’s Regional Director for Europe and Central Asia, says that even though Ukrainian authorities deny the practice of secret detention, “the evidence is overwhelming.”

“The release of 13 people is welcome, but simply confirms the need to end and investigate these abuses and deliver justice to the victims,” he said.

Representatives of Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch interviewed five of the recently released secret prisoners.

Three of them, Mykola Vakaruk, Vyktor Ashykhin and Dmytro Koroliov are determined to seek justice, activists say. The other two have asked to remain anonymous for fear of reprisals against themselves or their families.

“The interviews with former prisoners show a pattern of apparent attempts by the Ukrainian authorities to conceal the use of the secret detention facility in the Kharkiv SBU compound,” the report says.

Viktor Ashykhin, one of the former detainees, said that during his 597-day-long illegal detention the guards moved him three times to hide him from independent monitors.

According to the former prisoners interviewed by Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch, at least five other people are still in secret detention. Two are Russian nationals and two are Ukrainian citizens from Kharkiv. The fifth person allegedly suffers from a mental illness, the report says.

Tkachuk from the SBU urged Ukrainians and the media to be critical about such claims.

“I talked to our regional department in Kharkiv, and the information that there are some people held captive is false,” Tkachuk said in the comment to the 112 TV channel.

Tkachuk also promised to let the representatives of the human rights watchdogs inspect the SBU premises in Kharkiv.