You're reading: Lutsenko held in prison cell with two former law enforcers

Former Ukrainian Interior Minister Yuriy Lutsenko is held at the Lukianivka prison in Kyiv in a cell with two former law enforcement employees - a prosecutor from Makiyivka and an employee of the personnel department of Kyiv police, Verkhovna Rada human rights commissioner Nina Karpachova has said.

"I spent one and a half hours with Mr. Lutsenko in his cell and had a chance to communicate with him. This is a separate cell. He is in a cell with two other prisoners. One of them is a prosecutor from Makiyivka, while another – Valentyn Burmaka – is an employee of the personnel department of the Interior Ministry’s office in Kyiv," she said on December 28 at a meeting with a group of deputies from the Our Ukraine-People’s Self-Defense and BYuT-Batkivschyna factions, which gave her a letter asking her to help release Lutsenko.

The ombudswoman said that Lutsenko occupied a lower-bunk bed in a prison cell.

According to Karpachova, Lutsenko told her that he considered charges brought against him to be purely political. She noted that the former minister also expressed confidence that he had been illegally detained and then arrested without any grounds, although he said he has no claims against the judge who took such a decision.

Karpachova said that during the conversation with Lutsenko, she had proposed that he write a formal statement to allow him along with his lawyer to attend a court meeting during the consideration of his appeal regarding his arrest.