A journalist with a US-funded media outlet said he was tortured by Russian security agents into confessing to spying for Ukraine.
Vladyslav Yesypenko, who works for Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty (RFE/RL), was arrested last month in Crimea, which Russia annexed from Ukraine in 2014. He told a closed court hearing that he was given electric shocks and beaten by FSB agents over two days in a basement. He said that the agents threatened to kill him and make it look as if he had committed suicide if he did not confess.
“He said they connected some electric contacts to his ear lobes and his head and then switched on electricity that created excruciating pain,” Alexei Ladin, his lawyer, said. Yesypenko’s “confession”, which he has since recanted, was shown by state television. He gave mainly short or yes/no answers. His face appeared to be bruised.
Russia has charged Yesypenko, who holds dual Russian-Ukrainian citizenship, with storing illegal weapons. He denies the allegations. The US has called his arrest an “attempt to repress those who speak the truth about Russia’s aggression in Ukraine”. The FSB said he had taken photographs of infrastructure in Crimea.
His wife, Yekaterina, accused Russian agents of abducting him. Jamie Fly, head of the radio group, said: “The Russian authorities have similarly smeared RFE/RL Ukrainian Service contributors with false charges in the past. Vladislav is a freelance contributor with RFE/RL’s Ukrainian Service, not a spy, and he should be released.”
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Russia has fined RFE/RL about £700,000 over its refusal to comply with a demand that it identify itself as a “foreign agent” on its website.
Hundreds of Crimeans, mainly Crimean Tatars, have been imprisoned on espionage and terrorism charges since Russia seized the peninsula. Last week Russia jailed a 66-year-old woman named Galina Dovgopola for 12 years on charges of collecting information about its Black Sea fleet for Ukraine. The trial was held behind closed doors. The European Union has urged Russia to release Dovgopola and Yesypenko.
The European Court of Human Rights said in January that it would examine Ukrainian complaints about forced disappearances and other human rights violations in Crimea.
