Despite the state of war, Ukrainian law enforcement agencies are working to investigate and prosecute those who have committed atrocities against civilians and prisoners of war.
This is an internal process of Ukraine – in parallel with what Ukraine is trying to achieve internationally, so that war criminals at the highest level are brought to justice in an international tribunal.
In addition to the progress towards this goal, an internal legal process is already underway in Ukraine – investigation and prosecution of persons who have committed war crimes there.
These people are brought to court even if they are no longer in Ukraine, but there is evidence of their malice. In this case, the process takes place in their absence.
At the moment, 177 people are under suspect status for violations against civilians and prisoners, and there are also 46 court verdicts that have already entered into force, Oleksandr Zius, the representative of the General Prosecutor’s Office of Ukraine, said at a press conference on Tuesday.
“We are working in that direction. This month alone, my colleagues from the Prosecutor General’s Office informed about the charges against 11 people, as well as colleagues from regional departments – those who suffered the most from armed aggression – that is Kharkiv and Kherson region – they are investigating, they are working with materials , including those submitted by non-governmental organizations. They do not serve as evidence as such, but are additional information about them or other persons who carried out torture in Kherson region, Mykolaiv, temporarily occupied Kyiv region,” Zius said.
The amount of work is currently high. In fact, in all areas where Russian troops entered, episodes of torture have been found. Currently, the largest number of such cases have been identified in the Kherson region – a total of 128.
In second place is the outskirts of Kyiv – although the Russian army stayed in the vicinity of the capital for only about a month, currently 119 episodes of torture have been identified in this area. There are also large numbers in Kharkiv, Zaporizhia, Chernihiv, Sumy, Mykolaiv, Donetsk and other regions. A large number of Ukrainian non-governmental organizations are involved in the investigation of these war crimes.
“We gathered 432 cases of torture. Here we are only talking about cases of torture. We are not talking about the number of victims, because it is impossible to say the exact number. One person could have been tortured in one place, there could have been ten or several dozen people,” Ukrainian human rights organizations said. “Freerights” representative Anastasia Malinka.
Those who experienced torture said that most often they were severely beaten, electricity and various inhumane methods were often used, which even the volunteers themselves find difficult to talk about.
As the representatives of the non-governmental organizations told, people who were in the military service of Ukraine or relatives of soldiers are most often subjected to torture in the occupied territories.
Likewise, those working in local governments and volunteers who have helped other people, and in some cases also representatives of certain professions.
For example, in the occupied Zaporizhia nuclear power plant, people are forced to work for Russia. But many people were also simply shot for no reason when the occupation troops entered.
Previously, other non-governmental organizations had counted more than 800 people killed in such a targeted manner across Ukraine, and this is not counting those who are killed every day by Russian missile attacks on Ukrainian cities.
The work to collect this evidence in these crimes is ongoing. Ukrainians have still not lost hope that the war crimes will be examined by an international tribunal and that the Russian top leadership will be held accountable. Otherwise, it may give the green light to repeat these crimes elsewhere.
Typo?
Highlight the text and press Ctrl+Enter to send the corrected text fragment to the editor!
Highlight the text and press the Report an error button to send the corrected text fragment to the editor!
Report a bug
2024-01-30 14:23:51
#Collecting #information #Russian #war #crimes #Ukraine #identified #places #human #torture
