Police record 108 Russian torture chambers in occupied and de-occupied territories
25 February 21:24
The National Police has recorded 108 places of illegal detention of Ukrainians in the occupied and de-occupied territories, organized by the Russian military.
This was reported by the First Deputy Head of the National Police, Head of the Main Investigation Department of the National Police Maxim Tsutskiridze in an interview with RBC-Ukraine, Komersant ukrainskyi reports.
“There are places of detention not only in the occupied territories of Ukraine. Our citizens are also taken to Russia and held there. Officially, almost 200 people died there. And on our territory, in the occupied and de-occupied territories, we record 108 places of detention. These are terrible places,” he said.
According to Tsutskiridze, these are basements, cellars, schools, and animal farms.
“People were locked up in schools, in boiler rooms, in grocery stores. Wherever there were bars on the windows. And they kept them there. We recorded 66 places on the already de-occupied territory, and we were just horrified when we found gas masks, field communication devices that they used to electrocute people. We found broken teeth, bullets in the walls,” he said.
According to him, the detainees were subjected to severe torture.
In particular, Tsutskiridze told the story of a 70-year-old grandfather from an occupied village.
“One day, two occupants came to him, and for some reason they thought that he was adjusting the fire of our soldiers. They took him away and brought him to the occupied police station. They put him behind a table, told him to put his hands on the table and broke both his arms with an iron pipe. Then they stuck bicycle spokes under his shoulder blades in his back,” he said.
Fortunately, the old man survived and is testifying, Tsutskiridze added.
The first deputy head of the National Police also reminded that almost 70 thousand people are currently missing in Ukraine.
“We have a large number of missing persons, about 70 thousand. Now we have about 5,000 bodies – both civilians and military personnel that we found and received in exchange,” Tsutskiridze said.
According to him, identification of unidentified bodies is a priority for the National Police today.
“Investigators and forensic experts use different methods and mechanisms to identify them, depending on individual circumstances. Today, the most effective of them is DNA identification. We use this method in almost all cases of working with the bodies of deceased persons,” he said.
