State Run Prisons For Women In The Lugansk Republic Received Positive Review From The United Nations Human Rights Council ~ (PHOTOS)

Seleznevskaya female penal colony got positive review from representatives of the United Nations Human Rights Council, LPR Interior Minister Igor Kornet said.

The facility was visited by Oktam Gaziev, OHCHR regional monitoring mission office, international expert for human rights of the office Leila Clement and international officer for security issues of UN Human Rights Monitoring Mission in Ukraine Mohammad Shafiq. LPR envoy to the humanitarian subgroup of the Contact Group Olga Kobtseva and Kornet accompanied them.

“They got absolutely positive emotions,” Kornet said adding that this is the fourth penitentiary visited by observers and journalists.

The administrator of Seleznevskaya female penal colony Mikhail Karp said that currently 71 inmates are living in the facility, all of them serving at least 2^nd term. The capacity of the penitentiary is 350 inmates.

The living conditions in LPR penitentiaries and remand prisons where Ukrainian captives are held along with other inmates, are “absolutely adequate”, said coordinator of the working group on Humanitarian Issues Ambassador Toni Frisch who visited Lugansk on October, 27^th.

Earlier, Colonel of Internal Service Andrei Sokolskiy who heads the Lugansk Enforcement Department said the conditions at the Lugansk prison, previously known as Pre-Trial Detention Center No. 17, had markedly improved compared with the time when the facility was run by Ukrainian authorities.

LPR children’s ombudswoman Yulia Nazarenko said that the Lugansk prison conditions for underage inmates complied with international norms. In mid-September, five inmates declined to serve out their sentences in Ukrainian prisons, despite the offer by the International Committee of the Red Cross to assist them in the transfer.

In October British reporter Graham Phillips visited the Krasniy Luch penitentiary in the Lugansk People’s Republic as part of an independent journalistic investigation into the conditions in which the inmates are kept. The visit followed the report by BBC journalist Patrick Evans who accused local police of brutal and inhuman treatment of inmates.