‘We Want Ukrainian Justice!’ – Life-Sentenced Prisoners Did Not Escape the Abandoned and Unguarded Kherson Pre-trial Detention Centre
As Ukrainian troops began entering the city, the facility’s administration – collaborators appointed by the Russians – handed over the cell keys to their assistants among the prisoners and fled. Within a few hours, only ten out of four hundred and fifty prisoners remained in the pre-trial detention centre. Four of them were serving life sentences. These individuals, who believe themselves to be unjustly convicted yet have no chance of release or a judicial review of their cases, did not seize the opportunity to simply disappear into the vortex of wartime chaos. They waited for the Ukrainian military because they ‘want to be free according to the law’. We travelled to the Mykolaiv pre-trial detention centre, where the life-sentenced prisoners from the Kherson pre-trial detention centre are currently held, and spoke with Vardan Mahlochan, Oleksandr Pyzhov, and another prisoner whose name we will not disclose. His relatives are still in the occupied territory.
