Ukrainian citizen Vyhovskyi tortured by simulated shooting in Russia

Former political prisoner Hennadiy Afanasyev told how Russian security services had detained and tortured Ukrainian citizen Valentyn Vyhovskyi.

Afanasyev found about this after a meeting with the mother of Vyhovskyi on August 16-18, Crimea.Realities online media outlet reports.

According to Afanasyev, Valentyn arrived in Simferopol to meet his friend, but as it turned out later, the FSB ‘applied pressure to the girl’ and thus she lured him into Crimea. According to Afanasyev, later this friend witnessed against Valentyn at the Russian court.

“Valentyn was arrested by FSB special forces unit. During the arrest, he was hit into face with an elbow, stricken down to the ground, and with a sack over his head he was taken into a private room at the Simferopol airport. He was stripped there, searched, the photos and video of the search were taken. It all lasted for about five hours,” Afanasyev says.

He noted that beating continued even in the plane, by which Vyhovskyi was sent from Simferopol to Moscow, where he was taken to the FSB premises basement. According to Afanasyev, the interrogations under torture continued. After that, Vyhovskyi was given the text for reading to camera, where he confessed in ‘spying for the secret services of Ukraine’.

“In the morning, Valentyn Vyhovskyi, who is a businessman, a husband, a father, was taken to the wood in order to be scared to death. They were going by car for about five hours, they put off a bag from his head in the wood, placed him on the edge of the pit, four people thumbed back the hammer and stood like that silently for an hour. All that time he had no rest, no food, no water and was not allowed to take care of his needs,” Afanasyev says.

“Valentyn said the wood story was the most horrifying comparing to everything that had happened for that time. He gave up hope twice – at first when he stood on the edge of the pit and then when the guns went off. It was simulated shooting and seemed like it lasted forever. In the moments like that time goes by so slowly…” he added.

And then there was the arrest, trial and sentence to 11 years in a high-security penal colony in Kirovo town.

The Russian secret services did not comment on the tortures against Valentyn Vyhovskyi.

In July, the mother of Vyhovskyi appealed to the public for help in order to return her son. The woman has insisted on the innocence of his son and linked his arrest to repression against the Ukrainians in Crimea.

The Ukrainian Foreign Ministry voiced the protest against the sentence. According to the Ministry, the alleged crime committed by Vyhovskyi is unfounded.

In August 2015, the Ukrainian Foreign Ministry included Vyhovskyi in the list of political prisoners, convicts or those under investigation in Russia.