Occupants plan to create new prisons in Crimea

The terrorist country plans to expand the network of detention centers in the temporarily occupied Crimea. Human rights activists emphasize that the new pre-trial detention centers will be controlled by the FSB and will be used for pressure and confessions.

This was reported by Krym.Realii.

Russian authorities intend to expand the network of pre-trial detention centers in the occupied Crimea. According to the head of the Crimean Human Rights Group Olga Skrypnyk, the Russian government's program "Development of the Criminal Executive System" includes the construction of a new pre-trial detention center and an increase in the capacity of existing institutions - in total, it is about 2000 new places for detention.

According to the human rights activist, the issue of expanding detention centers has been discussed for a long time, but there was a lack of space.

"We see a decision not only to expand and re-equip the existing pre-trial detention centers, but also to build a new one - a rather large one," Skrypnyk noted.

Until 2014, there was only one pre-trial detention center on the peninsula - in Simferopol. However, in 2015, the Russian authorities began construction of two more, which were opened in 2022. In particular, residents of the newly occupied territories are held there.

The human rights activist emphasized that the work of pre-trial detention centers No. 2 and No. 8 is actually managed not by the Federal Penitentiary Service, but by the FSB. These are detention centers that the special service needs to extract confessions from people.

Earlier, the Representative Office of the President of Ukraine in the Autonomous Republic of Crimea confirmed similar plans. They reported that Russia intends to build an additional pre-trial detention center for 366 people, as well as to build a new detention center for 1500 people in two stages. In addition, it is planned to reconstruct the colony with the arrangement of 20 cell blocks and purchase 85 units of production equipment for use by prisoners in forced labor.

Since 2014, Russia has been using torture as a method of suppressing resistance in the occupied Crimea. Both political prisoners and pro-Ukrainian residents suffer from this: they are abducted, tortured, and kept in basements and colonies without access to medical care. Impunity and a weak response from the international community have only contributed to the spread of this practice to other occupied territories, where it is taking on even more brutal forms.

Анна Бальчінос