For what things you can be deprived of the freedom in “people’s republic”? What people can you meet “on the cellar”? In what conditions the prisoners of unrecognized formations live? The continue of chilling story of Luhansk inhabitant Aleksei Sergeevich about captivity and tortures of field commander of “LPR” “Batman”.

Part two. Closing

Hands in handcuffs began to tumefy. I asked the guardian to make them a little bit weak. He refused to do it by himself. I asked him to tell about my problem to somebody. First time he didn’t react on my requests. Then he still send my requests. Unknown “militia” came on the second or third day, he brought keychain with him, tried to open them, but none of the keys fit. Then he even tried to open handcuffs with masterkey. The “militia” with nickname “tranzit” came after one more day. He was Russian, the militia investigator. One of the cellmates gave me a towel, I tied it and we went outside, into the light. He spent a long time with my handcuffs, but he managed to take them off. He brought me to the torture-room, the clothes still were on the floor. I took them on and came back into the camera. When “Maniak” came in at the same day and saw me dressed and without handcuffs this made him angry. “Who would dare to violate my order?”.

I named the callsign of “Tranzit” . He went out and said that he would grasp with him. But to my happiness there were no more actions against me that day. I sat on the chair at the first and the second night. At the third night my cellmates put one or two more chairs for me that I could have laid. I couldn’t lay on my own back, because the places where hits of electroshock were made strongly hurted me and the attempts to lay on them made me feel the same pain like it was torturing me once again. When I tried to lay on my stomach it made me to accustom to the pain in my breast. I laid without movings. Only when pain a little bit dulled I could doze off and to catnap.  The kasha or soup were brought once a day. Cellmates allowed me to lay on one of the mattresses and gave some food on the third day. I was feeded first time on the second of third day. The camera constantly filled. “Maniak” periodically came and beated me with the segment of pipe. Another people also got hits. “Khokhol” once came in one of such a moments and began to beat me with legs at the same time “Maniak” was beating me with the pipe. He had such a trick to knock down and then jump on the chest. I understood that such actions could end awful for me. I was dodging as I could. This made him angry. He departed again, deserted and jumped on me. I tried to dodge once again. For my happiness he never succeeded in sighting jump on my chest.

They haven’t already demanded the recognition from me, I was only beaten. As I understand, they recognized that their blamings about my mounting of beacons were absurd. But they, looking on photos that I made, understood that I/m of pro-Ukrainian views. “Maniak” new me and was informed about my views and it was enough for them.

We had the toilet with washbasin and even not big window — 20 cm on 30 cm. As I said camera constantly filled and our was full of people. “Maniak” came after some time time to beat me once again and he said that this camera is very luxury for me and sent me with a few prisoners in another which was called the “death row”. The cell was 5 on 8 meters, there were blank walls, no ventilation and mattresses on the floor and a bucket. When I had been in a first cell, the three seniors were thrown in to us. Two of them were more than 50, third hhad the age moreover 60. They were cruelty beaten. The most old had a serious brain damage. He even couldn’t sit on chair, he fell down all the time. Another one had a deep injury from the knife or from the bayonet… The third had the broken ribs. The “guilty” was that they went from their country sites for the products into the shop. The block-post of separatists was not so far away from this place. They were fired, laid on the ground, beaten, they said they spotters, impose on them the artillery. One of them was tied hands behind his back and threw over the branch or some of horizontal bars. “I thought that my clavicles will flew away. I tried to remove all my weight on my foots, but separatist, standing near, hit my legs with the stick that I could not do it” — he told. Then sheepdog was set on on him. The dog bitten his buttocks. When they saw that the second one with knife injury was bleeding, they pulled his wound with some metal straps. They called the car of «rapid response team» (RRT), “antiterrorist, because they were terrorists, spotters and threw them into the cell.

Time by time one of the medics begin to come to us. He was the worker of ambulance, who also was thrown into the cell for a minor transgression. But when they knew that he is medic they released him on the condition that he would come in a free time to treat injuries to prisoners. He brought the analgesic, which a lot of us used. Medic, searched one of the “spotters” with broken ribs, said he must laid, didn’t get up and not to do harsh movements, because his ribs were so broken that any harsh movement could become the last. The ribs would puncture lungs and that’s all. The same information he reported to jailers. He said: “If you don’t need corpse here, he needs to be removed from here and hospitalized”. After some time man was released.

“RRT” worked hard and soon new cell filled too. They acted by the Soviet traditions: “Look how good we are. We caught so a big number of the terrorists”. It was needed for reporting,  for inflating cheeks and demonstrating its importance. I saw only one man who was involved to the correction of fire among the dozen and hundreds of prisoners. It’s nothing to say if compare the treatment to him with other captured. He was beaten, his phalanges were bitten off, he was asphixed. Periodically they hang him on the neck on a tree till the circumstance when he stopped to twitch. Then he was loosen, for not to die and to continue the bullying. Human capabilities are not limitless, of course he died after some time.

When tortures weren’t used to concrete people, “militias” sometimes came from this or another units to “look on this freaks, on this “ukrops”, to train on them as a punching bag. They beat those who couldn’t get up, mocked, beaten on the head with a pistol butt, puts a gun to his head and threatened to shoot on the spot, kicked in the stomach.

When the second cell filled out the authority of jail with nickname “Phobos” decided to extend it and he freed one more of the cellar. As he said it was V.I.P. cell. That’s why mattresses laid there not on the floor, they were on the door leafs, which were on its turn on elevations. It turned out a kind of bed. There even were two small windows, size of 20×30 cm. It was really V.I.P. cell comparing with the other rooms. Me senior “spotters” and a few men with us were brought there.

This cell was opposite of torture room. Mostly every evening we heard hits, screams and crying. Sometimes everything continued till the 2 or 3 o’clock am. Of course, we couldn’t sleep. Everyone laid and prayed that “Maniak” from torture room didn’t come to us and continued how he did for  a lot of times with other prisoners.

Till that time the power was disconnect, there wasn’t no light anywhere in Luhansk. We were in the dark.

The “militias” had the generators and all necessary things, because they used the service of hypermarket “Epicentre”. It was the stock of essential things. The put there their security and went to the hypermarket with list, which was approved by unknown to anybody commanders and took all that they wanted: drills, electric generators, home appliances etc. They came and said: “It’s ours!”. All equipment was working, all with walkie-talkies, flashlights.

“Maniak” because of old acquaintance especially marked me. Once, he came in the morning, dazzled me with flashlight and hit me with his rubber hammer from the surgery set directly into the breast. “I came to say good morning with this” — he said, then he turned and came out. It was pure sadistic. In particular, the saw and hammer were his favourite instruments. I thought that I  choked with pain. After this situation I couldn’t get up from bed calmly. It took some force from me to struggle with pain. Later, when I came in Kyiv, the x-rays of my body were made and it was revealed that brisket, ribs were broken in many places.

It sounds paradoxically, but there were a lot of separatists in this jail. There was, as they said, “the struggle for a healthy lifestyle”, the struggle with drunkenness. In principle, that sounds good. But mostly it was to catch the man, coming out from the shop with the battle of beer in his hand and to threw him into the cellar. Such man automatically became drunker.

It was impossible to incriminate something hard to people, so they were kept in the basement for month and used as free labor. They dug trenches, filled sandbags and built fortifications around the location of the «RRT» twine fence with barbed wire.

Those, who was the specialist in one or another branch were used for welding, car repairing. They were removed to repair heavy machinery of knocked out Ukrainian armoured vehicle and tanks. Two of separatists were threw iiinto the basement for leaving their positions. One of them had nickname “Granitsa” (The Border) another one “Pif”. As they told by themselves, their own commander “Shiko” gave the order to withdraw from the positions and relocate elsewhere to prevent loss, because according to his information this position might be seriously shelled. The radio connection was hard, so they couldn’t communicate with high commanders. They complied with the order of «Shico». However they can’t connect with him and they decided to visit “RRT”. Except the blaming that they leaved the positions by themselves, “Batman” was infuriated that the information that he ran away with 10 million dollars appeared in the unit where this insurgents were. They tried to found out and this situation too. Such tries of separatist were told to “Batman” and he ordered to throw them in the cell. He was beside himself with rage, shouting that they had no right to carry out such criminal orders. On this basis, they were kept in the basement and were kept for a long time. The treatment to separatists «RRT» referred, of course, was much more loyal than to us.

Also, people, whom was incriminated speculation and looting, were thrown to the cellar too. But, in spite of this people, who came back after works told that they were brought to stocks, the locks were broken there and they loaded everything that was there in the trucks and iit was moved into the location. What it was if not a looting in industrial scales? This means that somebody was grabbed and beaten for stolen couple of shoes from broken stall and then this people were taken for robbing the stocks.

A lot of people were thrown into the basement on trumped-up pretexts to use them as free labor. The reasons were absolutely idiotic. I’m asking one: “For what you’re over here?” — “I don’t know, I walked on the streets, they molested and said that I was very sunburnt. It’s questionably, so — on the cellar” — “And what about you?” — “They demanded documents from me” — “Didn’t you have them?” — “I had my passport and show it to them. They didn’t like that photo was black and white. They said that it is questionably — let’s go on the cellar”. The third showed the document, but month ago he lost his passport and he ought to do the new one. They looked: “It’s so fresh, questionably, maybe it was made not so long ago to throw you into Luhansk for terrorist activity” — on the basement. One of the man was delivered into the basement, because he looked at the “militias” side, but I suspect that they simply liked his car.

The automobiles were forced away under any most idiotic excuses. There were cases when drunk drivers were detained and their cars automatically were taken away. The rector or pro-rector of the “Agricultural University” was stopped was some nonexistent reason and two his cars were taken away. There were people in the cell, all their unhappiness was that they were businessmen and they had their own enterprises and money. They were beaten, mercenaries demanded from them to tell where is everything from their property and what houses were their own. I didn’t see it by myself, but “Maniak” demanded from woman to sign the donative for her house on him and his commander. In case of refusing he threatened to remove the skin from her face. According to words of the cellmates they saw how “Maniak” carried away from the cellar two packets full of notes with par value of two hundred and five hundred hryvnia. «Militia» did not disdain to extort money for the releasing, people were not always free after getting money.

I wasn’t even touched at the end of my concluding. They really understand that I wasn’t guilty in anything, but they didn’t hurried to release me. It was because they knew about my pro-Ukrainian position. Except this I saw and heard a lot while I was being in custody.

to be continued…

Written byDennis Matsola for informator.lg.ua