In Kalanchak in the Kherson region, the occupiers used the police station as a place of illegal detention for Ukrainians abducted in Kherson and other settlements of the region.
This is stated in a study by the Media Initiative for Human Rights.
According to the Media Initiative for Human Rights (MIHR), at the end of October 2022 there were at least 52 prisoners held there simultaneously.
In August 2022, Serhii Shchehlov was appointed to lead the occupation police in the settlement. It was from that time that the systematic abductions and persecutions of local residents began. Recall, Shchehlov has already been found guilty of violating the laws and customs of war and of collaborationist activity.
The detention facility had four four-person cells and one three-person cell, but in some cells up to 14 people were held at the same time.
“Four men slept on the bunks as ‘valets’, and all the others slept under the bunks and in the passageways, under the table, under the chairs – wherever there was room, they slept there”, – recounts former detainee Hryhorii Holovko, an entrepreneur from Hola Prystan.
According to civilian prisoners’ testimonies, the head of the detention center forced prisoners to learn by heart and sing the Russian national anthem. Those who made mistakes or forgot the words were beaten with a stick or shocked with electricity.
In addition, prisoners were used for forced labor. They were forced to clean the police station grounds, set up checkpoints, and wash employees’ cars.
On the second floor of the police station building there was a torture chamber. Kidnapped residents of Kalanchak and other people held by the occupiers were brought there for interrogations. According to witnesses, the torture was carried out by representatives of the FSB and the occupation police.
As of mid-January 2023, more than 30 men continued to be held in the Kalanchak detention center. By that time some people had been released or transferred to other places of detention in the occupied territory.
Earlier, human rights activists published a list of places of illegal detention of civilian prisoners in the temporarily occupied territory of the Kherson region. Thus, in Kalanchak the temporary detention facility was located at вул. 8 Березня, 20.