Police said Russian soldiers seized the juvenile detention center around mid-March and turned it into a prison for men who refused to cooperate with them or were accused of party activity. Three neighbors and two local shopkeepers said they started hearing screams about six weeks after they saw Russian soldiers occupying the building. Witnesses said they began to see people being dragged away with bags over their heads and some bodies being removed. Mykola Ivanovych, whose balcony overlooks the detention center’s backyard, said he saw two bodies dumped in the garages behind the center. The Guardian was with the press and prosecutors when they first entered the site and the bodies were removed. “They were getting beaten up […] completely disoriented,” said Ira, who has a booth outside the detention center. “They would come in here and ask for directions and we would give them money for the bus.” Witnesses said they never saw the faces of the men in charge of the center as they wore balaclavas and were dressed head to toe in black. Russian soldiers came to the home of pensioner Vitaliy Serdiuk in late August. They turned the place upside down and fired shots into the air when neighbors protested, then took Serdyuk to the detention center. Serdyuk was beaten so badly during the four days he was held that his wife, Elena, said she was afraid to leave the house for the past two months. Locals said they started hearing screams six weeks after Russian forces took over the detention center. Photo: Alessio Mamo/The Guardian He was told the beatings were for his son, a soldier in the Ukrainian army. His son, who was not in Kherson during its occupation, was recently wounded while fighting. Zhenia Dremo, an IT specialist, was hit on the forehead at a checkpoint because she had no cigarettes to give to the soldiers, leaving another visible scar. The Russians then took him to the detention center. “I got hit a little bit – I was lucky,” Dremo said, “but my colleagues got hit hard.” He said Russian soldiers “attached an electro-rod to his [cellmate’s] balls and the other on his penis. Then for two hours I sat there and listened to him scream,” she said. “I sleep badly at night to this day.” Dremo said he only saw the people in his cell, but there were eight in his cell and they changed regularly. He said he heard there were 23 cells in total, suggesting around 180 people could have been held there at any one time. “There were women there, too,” Dremo said. “There were at least two female cells. We had a friend, Anna, who was in there. They didn’t rape her, but they shaved her head.”
