When Olexandre, 32, a resident of Izioum in eastern Ukraine, trembles all over his body, it is not because of the bombardments that we hear in the distance. It is because he immerses himself in what happened at the end of March in his city. The Ukrainian authorities exhumed 447 corpses there that were buried in a forest, including 30 that showed signs of torture. Olexandre escaped death. Not to torture.
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It was six months ago, but yet, Olexandre is still jostled. He relives in a loop his abduction in the street by Russians, and his arrival in the basement of a school transformed into a torture room. “I spent ten days there“, he says. “Every morning when the rooster crowed, I knew they were coming to beat me up. It was very violent. They electrocuted me. They were torturing me“, details the young man, still in shock, who specifies that his executioners accused him”to be a resistance fighter who helped Ukraine“.
One afternoon, one of his jailers comes to fetch him. He puts a bag over her head and drags her into a yard: “The bag was in camouflage color. He took me by the neck, dragged in the street.”
“He told me ‘there is good news for you: today you will be executed’. I said: ‘good that way I won’t suffer any more'”
He recounts the rest as if he were reliving this horror scene: “They put me against a wall. I asked if I could smoke one last cigarette, they said ‘ok’. After a while, I felt the cigarette butt burn my fingers. I understood that it was the end and that they were going to execute me. I asked for another cigarette because in heaven you can’t smoke. I finished the second cigarette, I threw away the butt. I put my hands behind my back and said: I’m ready. Drawn ! He shot, but right over my head“.
“I was shaking all over my body, I fell to my knees.”
After this mock execution, the Russians release Olexandre. Just before, they make him sign a paper. It is written there that he undertakes not to carry out actions against Russia. No other explanation is given. Since then, time has passed, his city has been liberated, but his life is still hell.
“Sometimes I wake up at night, I have nightmares“, he says again. At night, he sees everything again: the bag, the head against the ground, the barrel against the neck. When he tells, his gaze is hallucinated and his eyes wide open. As if, since that day of March, he had never closed them again.
Olexander’s ordeal in Izioum – Report by Boris Loumagne
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