The Hromadske TV channel has aired a documentary with new evidence that the Security Service of Ukraine, better known as the SBU, kept people in a secret prison in Kharkiv from 2014 to 2016 – backing up previous claims made by alleged former captives and human rights activists.
Three people from the city of Ukrainsk in Donetsk Oblast told the Kyiv Post in 2016 that SBU officers had captured them and kept them in the detention center in Kharkiv, without making any official charges or letting their relatives know where they were.
The men, who had pro-Russian views, believe the SBU was preparing to exchange them for prisoners held by Russian proxy forces in Donetsk. But since the exchanges failed, the men were released after international human rights bodies started reporting the existence of the illegal detention center.
The SBU, which has only one official detention center, in the capital Kyiv, has repeatedly denied having any secret prisons, calling the claims Russian propaganda.
The SBU did say a former detention facility in Kharkiv was sometimes used as a dormitory for SBU officers, but that no captives had been held there for years.
Hromadske TV gained access to the building in Kharkiv after speaking to six former captives. There, they confirmed that details about the interior of the building given to them by the captives were correct.
For instance, they found holes that former captives said they had made in shutters in order to be able to look through a window.
The men claiming to be former captives also recognized one of their prison guards on video taken of the building interior.
In addition, one of the former captives, Mykola Vakaruk, claimed that SBU officers had brought him to a hospital in Kharkiv to treat his kidney disease, and registered him there under a false name.
Journalists from Hromadske TV brought Vakaruk to the same hospital, and its staff recognized the man.
The journalists also discovered that military prosecutors had closed a criminal probe into the existence of the secret prison, and the SBU had closed an internal investigation into this issue.
“The facts that we collected allow us to state that the secret prison in Kharkiv indeed existed from 2014 to 2016,” Hromadske TV said.
“If detention centers like this are being kept secret and are publicly denied, and no law enforcement body investigates this, then we have no guarantee that other publicly important information isn’t being concealed from the public.”
SBU spokesperson Olena Gitlianska again denied to the Kyiv Post that the SBU had ever had any secret prisons, and claimed that the evidence Hromadske TV reported could have been fabricated.
“We don’t understand why they (Hromadske TV) keep on reporting on this,” she said.
