Human rights groups on Saturday hailed the arrest of a Ukrainian pro-Russian separatist in France on suspicion of crimes against humanity, war crimes and complicity in acts of torture.
The International Federation for Human Rights (FIDH), the Ukrainian NGO Truth Hounds, which documents and investigates war crimes, and France’s Human Rights League (LDH) first told the authorities Yevhen Brazhnikov was in France four years ago.
France’s National Anti-Terrorism Prosecutor’s Office (PNAT) announced on Friday that the suspect, whom they only identified partially as Yevhen B., had been taken into police custody on April 7th, then charged and placed in pre-trial detention.
He is suspected of having tortured detainees at the notorious Izolyatsia prison in Russian-controlled Donetsk between 2016 and 2019.
The former contemporary arts centre was used to hold citizens suspected of supporting the Ukrainian government from 2014, when pro-Russian separatists took control of the region, according to Amnesty International.
The UN human rights agency said several hundred people were detained and tortured there, including after Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine in February 2022.
Former prisoners at Izolyatsia accused him of playing an “auxiliary” role while he was also a detainee.
He is suspected of having been “tasked in particular with extorting confessions from other prisoners, subjecting them to violence, torture, and other inhuman and degrading acts,” PNAT said.
He is also accused of “acts of a sexual nature involving violence” and of having participated in and facilitated “the commission of such crimes,” it added.
Brazhnikov, who is in his late thirties, has been living in France since 2021.
The head of the FIDH’s eastern Europe and central Asia desk, Ilya Nuzov, said his arrest “demonstrates that effective cooperation between Ukrainian civil society organisations and European judicial authorities can play a decisive role in advancing accountability.”
Lawyers for the civil parties, Clemence Bectarte and Marc Bailly, said it was “the first official referral by Ukraine to a third state.”
“It also underscores the essential role of universal jurisdiction in combating impunity for crimes committed in Ukraine,” they added.
