Ukrainian Parliament Commissioner for Human Rights Valeria Lutkovska is monitoring a case on the beating up of refugee Umar Abuev in Kyiv's pre-trial detention center, the ombudsperson's press service has reported.
On August 6, the Verkhovna Rada human rights commissioner received a report about the beating of a citizen during his detention in Kyiv’s pre-trial detention center. According to the UNHCR, Abuev has the status of UNHCR mandate refugee, and the European Court of Human Rights applied Rule 39 with respect to him, according to which Ukraine is forbidden to return Abuev to his country of origin.
On behalf of Lutkovska, employees of the department on the implementation of the national preventive mechanism at the ombudsperson’s secretariat started the checks and found that on August 3, Abuev was taken to Kyiv City Clinical Emergency Hospital with bodily injuries.
On August 7, the department’s employees visited the refugee in a special ward for the detention of prisoners. During questioning, he said that he had sustained bodily injuries after being beaten by unknown individuals in Kyiv’s detention center and that he did not remember the details of what happened.
Representatives of the ombudsperson, after talking to the medical staff of the hospital, said that Abuev was in a satisfactory condition and that there was no threat to his life. The patient is receiving the necessary medical care in full, and a number of examinations were conducted. Abuev confirmed that during his stay in hospital he was given all of the necessary medical care.
In order to establish the circumstances of the injuries sustained by Abuev, a respective appeal to the Prosecutor General’s Office of Ukraine is being prepared.
As reported, the Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees remains gravely concerned over the fate of two refugees recognized by UNHCR under its mandate, reads a statement posted on the Web site of the office in Ukraine.
Both refugees have been detained in pre-trial detention centers in Kyiv and Kharkiv, with a view to extradition.
The first refugee awaits emergency resettlement to a state party to the 1951 Convention Related to the Status of Refugees and a European Union member-state, after being recognized by it as in need of international protection. According to the office, the refugee remains incommunicado, with no access to his lawyer, for more than a week after being secretly moved from Kyiv to Kharkiv.
The second UNHCR mandate refugee, enjoying also the protection of the European Court of Human Rights, which under rule 39 indicated to Ukraine not to remove the individual to his country of origin, was brutally attacked while in custody in Kyiv’s Pre-Trial Detention Center No. 13. He is currently in hospital suffering serious injuries that put him in a coma, under guard and handcuffed to his bed.
