The Council of Europe’s Committee for the Prevention of Torture and Inhuman or Degrading Treatment or Punishment (CPT) is going to amount the treatment of Maidan detained protesters to torture.
The corresponding statement has been published in the CPT’s report, Kommersant reports.
“There are registered instances of ill-treatment of detainees, which were not justified by expediency of situation. These instances could be considered as amounting to torture,” reads the report.
Such ill-treatment, as noted, took place during detention, primary interrogation and delivery to the Internal Affairs divisions. The statement indicates the absence of individual identification numbers on the uniforms of the law enforcers as “one of the key obstacles to further investigation into violations” during the events on Maidan. It is noted that the officers of the Internal Affairs divisions have not been held liable for their misconduct.
The CPT’s experts, who visited Ukraine in February and September 2014 within the framework of the investigation into those events, believe that actions of the members of the “Berkut” special police unit and officials of the Interior Troops against protesters in some instances may be classified as “torture”.
The reports of the Committee for the Prevention of Torture and the request for an impartial investigation into those events were sent to the Ukrainian authorities.
