Reuters, March 2, THE HAGUE – War crimes investigators stated on Thursday, citing new evidence, that a network of at least 20 torture cells was “designed and directly financed by the Russian State” in the recently recaptured southern Ukrainian province of Kherson.
Since Kherson was regained from Russian forces in November after more than eight months of occupation, the Mobile Justice Team—funded by Britain, the EU, and the US—has been collaborating with Ukrainian war crimes prosecutors throughout Ukraine and there.
The mobile team is assisting Ukraine’s Office of the Prosecutor General as it examines more than 71,000 reports of war crimes made across the country since the invasion on February 24, 2022. It was established in May 2022 by the Global Rights Compliance humanitarian law firm and is supported by international experts.
The team, led by British lawyer Wayne Jordash, claimed in a statement that fresh information from recently freed Kherson shows that the Russian State planned and directly funded torture chambers.
Witnesses described the use of electric shock torture and waterboarding by Russian forces. At least 1,000 torture chamber survivors have submitted evidence to investigators and more than 400 people had been reported as missing from Kherson, it said.
Funding a network of torture facilities was part of a Russian state plan to “subjugate, re-educate or kill Ukrainian civic leaders and ordinary dissenters,” the team said.
Torture centres were operated by different Russian security agencies, including the Russian Federal Security Services (FSB), local Kherson FSB and the Russian Prison Service, it said.
