Secret SBU prison found at Mariupol airport

2024 Author: Seth Attwood | [email protected]. Last modified: 2023-12-16 15:55

RIA Novosti has found new documentary evidence of the existence of a secret Ukrainian prison at the Mariupol airport. According to known information, it belonged to the "Azov" battalion under the secret patronage of the Security Service of Ukraine. Details of the prison have been gathered in an investigation that will be published in several parts.

Earlier it was reported that in March, former SBU lieutenant colonel Vasily Prozorov spoke about a secret prison at the Mariupol airport, which is otherwise called a library. RIA Novosti journalists collected testimonies from those people who went through it. The victims spoke of torture and threats.

According to preliminary data, fighters of the self-proclaimed Donetsk People's Republic, as well as those who are suspected of sympathizing with the separatists, end up in a secret prison.

The UN monitoring mission recorded 16 cases of illegal arrests and detention. For example, one of the captives said that the SBU officers intimidated her with a kind of ditch, into which they dumped the bodies of the victims of torture. Torture with electricity and a chainsaw is also known. All this is not medieval fantasy or fantasy from horror films, but real mockery from the 21st century.

Tatiana Ganzha, a resident of Mariupol, recalls her time in prison. She spent ten days there. Ganzha was a member of the Communist Party of Ukraine, which is now banned in this country. She participated in protest rallies in Mariupol, in the May 11 referendum on the future of the Donetsk region. Azov detained her in October 2014.

According to Tatiana, inside the prison there is a light corridor with many plastic doors. "I realized that this is a refrigerator … a terrible place," - says Ganzha. According to her, she spent ten days at the airport, from October 30 to November 8. The woman claims that there are notches in the cell where she was. Thus, the prisoners, in order not to go crazy and somehow orient themselves in time, celebrated the days they spent in prison. Also, elephants were painted on the wall, symbolizing the days. Subsequently, Tatiana found out that they were made by another prisoner, Natalya Myakota.

Ganja describes what is happening at the airport as "a real hell, a place of death." According to her, the bridge of her nose was broken, and her left ear could not hear. The woman claims that remembering all this is difficult. But the "VSUshnik-boy", who took her to the toilet along the ill-fated corridor, said that two days before her, a girl, also Tatyana, was beaten to death in prison.

The woman was constantly threatened with a pit and a ditch, into which the bodies of the dead were thrown, hinting that she would soon join their numbers. They also frightened with psychological torture when a still living person was sent to the dead for a while.

When asked how many people were buried in this pit, Tatiana says that there are a lot, since people disappeared without a trace even before her imprisonment. Perhaps the count goes to the hundreds.

Ganzha claims that “comrades from“Azov”took everything from her house - the heating system, windows, doors. Members of the“volunteer battalions”sent them as a trophy.

It is also known about Olga Seletskaya, who spent a day in prison. According to her, at the airport they are threatening that they may bring their family, husband, children there, who will be killed in front of you.

Seletskaya says that one of the most popular tortures among torturers is to drown a person in a barrel or torture him with a wet rag. A rag is placed on the person's face and slowly poured water over it so that the person begins to choke.

Olga remembered the callsigns of two doctors - "Myasnik" and "Doctor". The prisoners were called "books" and the place of detention was called "the library". According to Seletskaya, she saw many in the basement of the SBU, who also passed the Mariupol airport. These people were severely beaten and maimed. Olga heard that some of them did not return after interrogations.

Journalist, editor-in-chief of "Municipal newspaper" Elena Blokha recognized in the SBU lieutenant colonel Prozorov the person who participated in her arrest. The woman described her impressions of the airport in the book "90 days in captivity", which so far exists only in electronic form.

Bloch talks about his detention. According to her, the SBU officer asked her to go with them, claiming that everything was fine. Half an hour later they arrived at the airport. There were several checkpoints on the territory, on which there were awards not only from sandbags, but also anti-tank hedgehogs with barbed wire. Armed men with masks stood at the posts. From the direction of the building, shouts and blows were heard, similar to someone being beaten.

Elena Blokha even managed to get into the "refrigerators" where the prisoners were kept. According to her, there was a room 3 by 1, 5 meters, lined with white tiles, where there was only one chair. On it sat a girl with a pale face. After the prison officer closed the door, the room became dark and stuffy. Apparently there was no ventilation whatsoever.

A cellmate told Blokh that she was twice taken to the "execution", where she was forced to confess that she was a saboteur of the DPR.

Earlier at a press conference, Vasily Prozorov showed photographs of nine prisoners from the "library". They depicted people of different ages - from teenagers to old people. All of them had traces of severe beatings.

According to the lieutenant colonel of the SBU, somewhere on the territory of the airport there were also secret graves of those who could not withstand the torture or were simply killed by the warders.

The RIA Novosti investigation provides a variety of evidence of the existence of the prison. Among them are a document from the SBU itself, information from former law enforcement officers, various copies of documents, as well as video interviews with former prisoners.