Any improvement immediately after Euromaidan in the perceived prevalence of police torture and ill-treatment in Ukraine has ended.  A survey just published found that the number of victims of unlawful police violence had risen by well over 200 thousand since 2015, with the number of alleged victims of torture rising from almost 63 thousand in 2015 to almost 96 thousand in 2017

An exiled member of the Crimean Tatar Mejlis [representative assembly] has issued an angry statement after his elderly parents became the latest target of the FSB in Russian-occupied Crimea.  The summoning of Eskender Bariev’s 84-year-old father, 79-year-old mother and other close relatives for interrogation comes less than a month after an extraordinary attempt to arrest 83-year-old Vedzhie Kashka led to the death of that internationally renowned veteran of the Crimean Tatar national movement

We cannot know how many Ukrainians the FSB have abducted and tortured in Russian-occupied Crimea to extract ‘confessions’ to non-existent crimes, however Renat Paralamov hopes that his refusal to remain silent can help prevent the number becoming even higher.

There are over forty Crimean political prisoners in Russian-occupied Crimea or Russia, and that figure is rising. Access to information and contact with them is limited, with Russia clearly hoping that people will forget about them. A letter just received from Yevhen Panov makes it quite clear how much our letters mean to the imprisoned men

The European Court of Human Rights has found Ukraine in violation of the right to life over the death of Volodymyr Kutsenko from police torture and lack of medical care, and then over the failure to carry out an effective information.

12 Crimean Tatar activists, as well as prominent lawyer Emil Kurbedinov and journalist Taras Ibragimov were detained in Simferopol on Friday after gathering with the relatives of Renat Paralamov, the father of four who was abducted and brutally tortured on September 13.  

It took the FSB in Russian-occupied Crimea over 24 hours to admit that Renat Paralamov had been in their offices, and then they came up with the surreal claim that he had ‘voluntarily’ returned there after being released on Wednesday afternoon. They have given no explanation for the brutal torture, including beatings and electric shocks, that he was subjected to

There is no proof that Oleksiy Stohniy was tortured by the FSB in November 2016, yet how else do you explain why he ‘confessed’ to being part of a Ukrainian Crimea sabotage plot for Russia state television and the fact that he has now been convicted of something else altogether?

Four men remain imprisoned a year after Russia tried to convince the world that they were part of a Ukrainian military plot to ‘encroach’ upon Ukraine’s own territory. The trial of two has nothing to do with their confessions, and pressure against a third to now ‘admit guilt’ cannot negate his and the fourth man’s detailed accounts of torture and denials of the entire nonsensical ‘plot’

The FSB have seized another Ukrainian in Russian-occupied Crimea and claimed that he was carrying out acts of sabotage for the SBU, Ukraine’s Security Service.

A court in Russian-occupied Crimea has sentenced Redvan Suleymanov to 1 year and 8 months imprisonment on a charge which differs radically from his widely televised ‘confession’ to involvement in a Ukrainian military ‘Crimea saboteur plot’. 

Ukrainian Yevhen Panov has proven to be the Russian FSB’s greatest miscalculation in its generally aborted first attempt to fabricate a ‘Ukrainian Crimea Saboteur’ plot. The torture used to obtain his ‘confession’ was too obvious, and the efforts to prevent him seeing a real lawyer thwarted by the European Court of Human Rights

Ukrainian truck driver Volodymyr Prysich had the misfortune to be delivering furniture to Russian-occupied Crimea on August 13, 2016, when Russia’s FSB was on the lookout for other Ukrainians to accuse of involvement in a supposed ‘Ukrainian sabotage plot’. The last to be arrested, he was the first to be convicted of something entirely different from what he ‘confessed’ to

46-year-old Volodymyr Balukh is suffering from heart problems and high blood pressure after 6 months in a filthy and overcrowded Crimean SIZO [remand unit]. The recognized political prisoner’s very life could be in danger, and he is just one of at least 28 men held on fabricated charges in appalling conditions

Ludmila Surzhenko is, thankfully, safely on unoccupied Ukrainian territory, but she will need time to recover from the physical and psychological effects of the nearly three weeks she was held prisoner by militants from the self-proclaimed ‘Luhansk people’s republic’

Vitaly Rudenko, a judge from the Luhansk Regional Court of Appeal, was freed on July 30 after nine months held prisoner by militants from the self-proclaimed ‘Luhansk people’s republic’ [LPR]’. Rudenko was seized in October 2016, when he tried to enter military-controlled territory to attend his father’s funeral.

Crimean journalist Alexei Nazimov, who has been in detention since October 2016 on questionable and suspiciously fluid charges, has reported being beaten and subjected to other forms of gross ill-treatment from convoy guards taking him to and from the court.

In the absence of any evidence of acts of sabotage, damning proof of innocence and of the torture used to extract confessions, Russia’s FSB are using unlawful forms of pressure to force Yevheny Panov and Andriy Zakhteit to give up their lawyers and ‘cooperate’.

Crimean Tatar Mejlis leader Akhtem Chiygoz was allowed a meeting lasting only 10 minutes on Tuesday with his mother who is dying of cancer. Russia finally relented to that barest modicum of humanity after almost two weeks of rejecting any calls, despite the critical urgency of the situation

Russia has imprisoned Crimean Tatar Mejlis leader Akhtem Chiygoz on legally nonsensical charges and is now refusing to allow him to see his dying mother. Aliye Abduraimovna has cancer and doctors believe it is a question of days or weeks, no longer.