In June 2016, the UN released a report detailing use of secret detention in Ukraine. (c) Mstyslav Chernov / AP / Press Association Images. All rights reserved.Last week Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch published a joint report documenting incommunicado and secret detention of civilians by the warring sides in the conflict in eastern Ukraine. Among the places we noted where civilians had been held in secret detention was Ukraine’s Security Service (SBU) compound in Kharkiv.
Before publishing the report, we met with Ukraine’s presidential administration and military prosecutor. We shared our findings and told them we had grounds to believe that as many as 16 people may remain in secret detention at the compound. They vehemently denied the allegation but pledged to investigate.
This week, we received further information that corroborates our conclusion that at least as of June, those 16 people were still there — and indeed that another four had joined the group. The information came through a case involving not a civilian, but a man who had fought on the side of Russia-backed separatists early in the armed conflict in eastern Ukraine. But his story, which we learned from his mother, confirms the use of the SBU compound in Kharkiv for secret detention.
