Occupiers kidnap ordinary Ukrainians and take them to a pre-trial detention center in Russia, – say human rights activists

The occupiers forcibly deported and detained civilians in Russian pre-trial detention centers (pre-trial detention centers, “SIZO”) without any legal justification. This is stated in “Nastoyaschee Vremya” article.

“Girls, women, men and the elderly are being held in Russian pre-trial detention centers. Many of them simply went home and were abducted. We do not know anything about the legal justification for why our civilians are in custody. There are cases when the Russian military took away our civilians who need constant medical care, need medicine every day, and have very serious illnesses. We don’t know why they took away elderly people, why they took away people who can’t walk and take care of themselves. And we know that many people are kept in brutal conditions. Our people in the pre-trial detention center are bullied every day: they are not allowed to sleep, they waked up endlessly, they pour cold water on them, they pour cold water into their shoes to freeze their feet,” Nataliia Yashchuk, coordinator of national projects at the Center for Civil Liberties reported in the publication.

The Ukrainian human rights activists record testimonies of the civilian Ukrainians who managed to escape. There are already indications that our fellow citizens are being tortured in Russian pre-trial detention centers.

It should be noted that Article 49 of the Geneva Convention states that “for any reason, abduction or deportation of persons from the occupied territories to the territory of the occupying State or to the territory of any other State is prohibited, whether occupied or not.”

The full version of the article can be found here.