The lawyers of the Helsinki Group received an evidence that Panov was tortured during an interrogation

The Ukrainian Helsinki Human Rights Union received the Russian documents which prove that Ukrainian Yevhen Panov, who is accused of terrorism, testified under pressure. 

At the end of August 2016, the Ukrainian Helsinki Human Rights Union send a request from the name of Yevgen’s brother Igor to the European Court of Human Rights. It requested the court to use rule №39, because there was a serious risk that Russian security officers will torture him, reports an official web-site of the Union. 

“As a result, the European Court began a communication between the governments of Ukraine and Russia in order to collect all the documents and explanations of injuries. In result, Russia sent to the Court the documents about his health, where his complaints and traumas are described and Russia will individually investigate how he received them. The Court was satisfied with this and refused to apply rule 39 (Panov’s extradition to Ukraine). There are a few lawyers, but no one could visit him. He refused everyone, even haven’t seen them. Under these circumstances, we can not state that this refusal was voluntary. We tend to think that all of them were not voluntary. Only Russian authorities fixed the injuries. They can not be verified by independent sources”, – says Oleksandr Zarutskyi, a lawyer of the Center for Strategic cases of the Helsinki Union. 

According to Mykhailo Tarakhkalo, the head of the Center for Strategic Cases of the Helsinki Union, the lawyers actually received confirmation of the tortures. 

“Actually, we received confirmation from Russia that Panov was tortured. We received confirmation that injuries were noted by the doctors. It completely confirms Panov’s version that before August 12 he was severely tortured in order to receive from him a confession of guilt. An inquiry, held on August 13, noted several injuries. And after this, he is in isolation.Until recently, any independent lawyer could not visit him. It means that all the testimonies he gave were given under pressure and torture”, – said Tarakhkalo. 

On August 10, a Russian FSB declared that it arrested the citizen of Ukraine Yevgen Panov in Crimea. FSB named him as one of the organizers of a planned terror attack. 

On August 11, a Russian “REN-TV” published a video where Panov gives his testimony. 

His brother, Ihor Kotelianets, said that “Panov was planning to come back to Zaporizhya, but suddenly he was invited on a vacation and disappeared”. He thinks that his brother was kidnapped on the territory of Ukraine and brought to Crimea.

Crimean human rights group with the reference to a source, close to the official authority in Crimea, declared that Yevgen Panov was severely tortured during first 3 days. 

“Several people tortured him. He was in the shackles, strapped by the tape to a chair, with a bag on his head. After this, they connected him to wires and turned on electricity. Security forces threatened him with a sexual assault”, – human rights activists quote the source. 

Thereby, they received a video testimony and a refusal from a lawyer. 

A coordinator of the Crimean human rights group Olha Skrypnyk stated that similar means of tortured were used towards Hennadiy Afanasiev, Oleh Sentsov, Andriy Kolomiets and Oleksandr Kostenko. 

Skrypnyk says that the case of Ukrainian saboteurs is one of the most unpublic cases in Crimea. Today it is even hard to say what they are accused of.