The Department for crimes connected with the use of prohibited means and methods of warfare of the RF Investigative Committee’s head Office continues the investigation in setting up and membership in a criminal group; abduction of a person and human trafficking under Parts 1 and 2 of Article 210, Article 126 and Article 127.1 of the RF penal Code.
Russian Vladimir Bezobrasov kidnapped by the Ukrainian Military Forces and illegally prosecuted in Ukraine has been released thanks to the efforts made by the Russian side. Together with his family the man was on vacation in Odessa in June 2014, but was detained without any grounds and charged with recruiting local residents to take part in the armed conflict for the self-declared Donetsk and Luhansk People’s Republics against Ukrainian regular military troops and nationalistic punitive battalions. During interrogation, which representatives of the Ukrainian Security Service called just a “heart-to-heart talk” agents tortured Bezobrazov physically and mentally to make him confess to the crimes. They ignored any objective data and other evidence which refuted the version of Ukrainian investigators.
To get the confession from the Russian citizen the agents threatened to kill him and his family. They demonstrated the pictures of his family standing at gun points and convinced him that if he did not confess than he and his family will be thrown to the Right Sector (an organization prohibited in Russia).
Bezobrazov was broken and had to give false evidence that he was involved in recruiting Ukrainian citizens to take part in the armed conflict in Donbass. Based on this data, he got a suspended sentence in March 2015 in Odessa. But when he left the court room he was yet again held by the agents of the Ukrainian Security Service and was held without any legal grounds in so-called secret prison (not meant to hold people there) until December 2016.
The investigators in cooperation with operative services have identified people involved in Bezobrazov’s kidnapping, but their names are not to be disclosed in the interest of the investigation. Investigation into this and other similar crimes committed against Russian citizens is ongoing.
The circumstances surrounding the kidnapping of our citizen once again confirm that Ukraine turns a blind eye to multiple facts of tortures used against the detainees, keeping people in secret prisons with no investigation or trial and death of civilians from the hands of Ukrainian military men. All the attempts to make the world believe that detainees in Russia are tortured and their rights violated are unfounded. Such practices are impossible in our country and everybody knows that all detainees whatever their citizenship have their rights fully observed, including the right to a translator, lawyer, medical aid and others.
Acting Head of Media Relations S.L. Petrenko
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