New evidence of the deportation of more than 1,800 Ukrainian prisoners from Kherson and Mykolaiv regions has been submitted to the International Criminal Court in The Hague.
This was reported by Ukraine’s Prosecutor General Ruslan Kravchenko.
“In November 2022 Russian forces forcibly moved these people through occupied Crimea to penal colonies in the Russian Federation. The evidence shows that this was a pre-arranged operation: from the seizure of Ukrainian prisons to the detention of people on the territory of the aggressor state”, – he said.
In Russian penal institutions Ukrainian citizens are subjected to systematic violence. Human rights defenders have documented instances of beatings, torture, psychological pressure and threats of execution. In addition, the deported are forcibly used in the construction of Russian military fortifications, pressured to accept Russian citizenship, and are also illegally detained even after the completion of their prescribed sentences.
The information and evidence package submitted to The Hague is based on testimonies of more than 400 direct victims and witnesses, a detailed analysis of Russian court decisions, official documents and responses from Russian state bodies confirming the presence of Ukrainians in specific penal colonies.
The materials were prepared and verified through joint work of state bodies and the human rights community, including the NGO «Protection of Prisoners of Ukraine», the European human rights network «European Prison Litigation Network» (EPLN) and the Kharkiv Human Rights Group (KHPG).