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When Serhiy Karpilenko was detained for allegedly stealing a cell phone, he was a healthy young man with a job and a future.

When Serhiy Karpilenko was detained for allegedly stealing a cell phone he was a healthy 25-year-old man with a job and a future. Two years later, on Nov. 7, Karpilenko was dead after suffering from tuberculosis, HIV and meningitis, according to his death certificate.

Sitting at a table holding a photograph of her son, Zoya Karpilenko said he had been rushed to the hospital with a ruptured spleen in April, seven months before his death.

“He was complaining of beatings during interrogations. Prison officials denied everything, but then my son was rushed to the hospital to have his spleen and part of a lung removed,” Karpilenko said, speaking through tears.

Her son Serhiy’s case is far from exceptional.

Human rights activists say thousands of people in pretrial detention are deprived of adequate medical treatment, causing serious health problems and even deaths.

The worsening condition reportedly suffered by former Prime Minister Yulia Tymoshenko, while being held at the Lukyanivsky detention center, has brought a spotlight on the conditions for prisoners awaiting trials.

Tymoshenko’s supporters say she is in such bad health that she cannot attend court hearings and spends most days lying in bed.
Other cases are even more horrifying.

Denys Zaitsev, 26, died in a hospital on Sept. 6 after being brought there paralyzed from the main Kyiv detention center.

Olexandra Robeyko, 28, died of tuberculosis and HIV in a hospital on Sept. 15, where she was brought from the Lukyanivsky detention center.

Tamaz Kardava, citizen of Georgia who lived in Ukraine since the early 1990s, is shown in a hospital bed before his death from liver and kidney failure. (Oleh Veremeyenko)

Tamaz Kardava, 43, died on April 7, 2010 after a court declined his request for release to seek medical treatment for severe hepatitis C that led to his death from liver failure.

Aside from issues of rampant police brutality, activists say detention centers are underfinanced, overpopulated and riddled with disease.

Moreover, Soviet totalitarian habits of secrecy die hard. In many Western democracies, police are required to disclose many details about any person taken into custody or arrested. Also, jails are required to post online the names of all inmates incarcerated and the circumstances of their detention.

Ukraine has a prison population of 150,000, including 40,000 in pre-trial detention, according to World Prison Population. Some prisoners have been kept in pre-trial detention for up to 12 years, as there is no legal limit.

Nina Karpachova, the parliament’s ombudsman for human rights, said most prisons are “massively overpopulated” and “people take turns sleeping.” According to the Health Ministry, 6,000 prisoners have HIV and 5,500 suffer from an active form of tuberculosis. The numbers are growing.

The situation in pretrial detention centers is even more serious, analysts say, because – according to law – these prisoners cannot receive the treatment they need because they haven’t been convicted of a crime.

As prisoners in pretrial detention have no court ruling yet, they are not eligible for treatment in the State Penitentiary Service’s hospitals, which only treats convicts.

Before 2008, a Health Ministry resolution provided a procedure for releasing pretrial detainees for medical treatment and even listed illnesses which were considered serious enough to free prisoners.

Ukraine’s pre-trial jail centers hold 40,000 prisoners

When the resolution was cancelled in 2008 by the Justice Ministry, a new one was not implemented, creating what human rights lawyers call a dangerous legal vacuum.

“Now those in pretrial have only very poor detention center medical facilities.

In order to seek medical treatment outside the center, they have to get a court decision,” said Andriy Didenko, coordinator of the Kharkiv Human Rights Group.

Heather McGill from Amnesty International said detention center officials often “blame the courts, who hesitate or decline requests for the release of detainees.” She added that this might be due to the lack of a clear procedure that judges could base their decision on.

Often the court takes weeks to come to a decision, and when the person is allowed to the hospital it might be too late already, as in the case of Robeyko and Kardava.

However, human rights activists and lawyers said that in many cases detention center management does not bother to ask the court.

“The State Penitentiary Service is severely underfinanced. Sometimes they even do not bring detainees to court, because they do not have the fuel for the vehicle,” said Kardava’s lawyer Oleh Veremeyenko.

If the judge allows the detainee out for treatment, detention center officials should provide a vehicle and guards for the hospital. “Sometimes they do not have these resources; other times they just don’t care,” said Dmytro Hroysman from the Vinnytsya Human Rights Group.

The State Penitentiary Service admits that it is underfinanced and only received about half of the financing it requested from the state budget in 2011.

A spokesman for the service, Ihor Andrushko, said that in cases of serious health emergencies, detention center officials call an ambulance.

He said that all complaints of ill treatment and denial of medical attention are investigated. However, the State Penitentiary Service did not reply to a request for comment on the outcomes of these investigations and measures taken.

Kyiv city prosecutors did not reply to questions as to why the investigation into Kardava’s case was closed.

The cases of Robeyko and Zaitsev are now being looked into by human rights ombudsman Karpachova, who has no real powers beyond drawing public attention to abuses.

Amnesty International says prosecutors are reluctant to open cases into alleged police abuse.

In its recent Oct. 12 report on police impunity in Ukraine, Amnesty International documented numerous cases “where well-founded allegations of torture have been dismissed by prosecutors with the standard response ‘there is no evidence of a crime.’”

When asked about her legal plans, Zoya Karpilenko wiped her tears and went silent for a moment.

Then she said: “I do not believe there will be any proper investigation into my son’s death. And nothing will bring him back. But I hope my telling this story might help save other people.”

Kyiv Post staff writer Svitlana Tuchynska can be reached at [email protected]