Early one October morning in 2019, Liudmyla Huseinova was grabbed by a group of men as she left her home in Novoazovsk, a city in eastern Ukraine occupied by Russian-backed separatists. The 64-year-old says they threw her into a car, beginning what she describes as a “nightmare” in Russia’s secretive detention system. Among her captors, she says, was Yurii Temerbek, a former Ukrainian traffic policeman who had joined the separatists. Two weeks later, she alleges, Temerbek watched as a man with a Russian accent sexually assaulted her in the Izolyatsia detention centre. A BBC World Service investigation has identified Temerbek and two other men accused of abusing detainees; survivors see revealing their identities as a step toward accountability. "If the men I accuse aren't found and imprisoned," Liudmyla said, "then justice for me will be that their names as criminals and torturers will be known to their children." The UN's human rights office says torture and ill-treatment of civilians in Russia's detention system in occupied Ukraine is "systematic and widespread," describing beatings, electric shocks, mock executions and sexual violence. The Kremlin has accused the UN of bias. Ukrainian authorities say more than 16,000 civilians have been taken captive or disappeared since 2014.
In a separate case in Vienna, a former Syrian intelligence chief in Raqqa, identified only as Khaled al-H., was found guilty of torture and sexual abuse of opponents of Bashar al-Assad. A second former Syrian official, Moussab Abou R., was also convicted. Both were sentenced to eight years in prison for crimes including sexual coercion and inflicting serious bodily harm. Prosecutors said the torture was carried out to “suppress the protest movement against the regime at the time and to intimidate the population.” Victims testified of being stripped naked, beaten, given electric shocks, or doused in hot and cold water. One man described being hit on the soles of his feet with electric cables. The two men, who denied the charges, had applied for asylum in Austria in 2015. They have the right to appeal.
“BBC investigation names Russian jailers accused of torture in Ukraine; Syrian intelligence chief convicted in Vienna.”
