Stepan Konstantinovich CHERBEBSHI. 28

1. Until his arrest in June 1992 the applicant was living in Tiraspol. He had been living there for ten years. In 1992 the applicant was chief economist in an enterprise based in Tiraspol. He was also the leader of the Tiraspol branch of the Democratic Christian Popular Front of Moldova, a position he had held since October 1989, when this party was created. On account of his political activity, pressure was put on him, grenades and stones were thrown into his house and he was finally fired from the position he held as chief economist. In February his family had had to take refuge in Chişinău. However, the applicant remained in Tiraspol.

2. On the morning of 2 June 1992, around 4.30 a.m., as his dog in the courtyard started to bark, the applicant looked out of the window and saw armed soldiers dressed in camouflage and bullet-proof vests, jumping over the fence and taking up combat positions. The soldiers were wearing uniforms of the Fourteenth Army with the emblems of the Soviet Union.

The applicant's family, who were in Tiraspol for a few days, were sleeping. The applicant went to lock the door of the house, which was unlocked. The door then suddenly opened and five or six soldiers broke in and hit him in the face with the butt of a gun and tied his arms behind his back. He was then taken out and put in a Volga car. When taken out, he saw that in the courtyard and around it there were two armoured vehicles at the end of the street and around 50-60 soldiers led by a colonel accompanied by a lieutenant-colonel, whose name was, the applicant learned later, Vladimir Gorbov. The applicant also recognised among the people who started to search his house a certain Victor Gushan from the Transdniestrian secret services. The applicant claims that he had no arms or explosives in his house. When the applicant's wife asked them why they had arrested the applicant, Mr Gushan said it was because the applicant was the leader of the Popular Front of Moldova, and as they were at war with Moldova the applicant was considered to be dangerous and had to be detained.

3. The applicant was taken to the building of the Ministry of Security in Tiraspol and put into a cell in the basement. When first arrested the applicant was told that arms had been found in his house or that he was suspected of having arms in his house.

4. Some time later the applicant was taken to a room where he was interrogated by Vadim Shevtsov, “Minister of Security of the MRT” and three other colonels who were dressed in Fourteenth Army uniforms. On the third day interrogations started to take place during the night, one interrogation led by Vladimir Gorbov, another one by the three colonels. The applicant heard from the guards that the three colonels were from the secret services of the Fourteenth Army counter-intelligence division. During the interrogation led by Mr Gorbov relating to his political activity the applicant was accused of committing terrorist acts in Slobozia district. During the second interrogation a bargain was proposed to him, under the terms of which he, as leader of the Popular Front, would co-operate and say that he had been trained in Romania by special troops, somewhere near Braşov, that he had been armed by Romanians and sent to Transdniestria to carry out terrorist acts against the Russian civil population in Transdniestria. The applicant denied all these accusations and refused to accept such a bargain. Consequently, he was repeatedly beaten and subjected to psychological torture.

5. During his first week of detention he had had no food at all. On many occasions during the initial investigation he was not allowed to sleep. The guards would come into the cell at 5 a.m., the bed would be stood up against the wall and he would then not be allowed to sleep until they had taken the bed down again.

6. After five or six days, maybe more, the applicant was blindfolded and was taken to another place. When food was brought to him he saw soldiers of Fourteenth Army and was told that he was in the military garrison of the Fourteenth Army. The applicant realised the next day that he knew the building, as he had been there before, when he was arrested in 1989 also by the Fourteenth Army, after founding the Popular Front.

7. At the time when he was detained at the military garrison of the Fourteenth Army in 1992, the commander was Colonel Mikhail Bergman, whom the applicant remembers as having been the only one who treated him humanely. Mr Bergman never took part in the interrogations.

During his detention there, the applicant saw only Mr Godiac and Mr Ivanţoc. One day, the door of his cell opened and Ivanţoc was asked by Gorbov, Bergman and the other investigators to identify him, which he did. The applicant did not know Mr Ivanţoc at that time, but Mr Ivanţoc certainly knew him as he was the leader of the Popular Front.

8. During his detention at the military garrison of the Fourteenth Army, the applicant was taken out to be interrogated in various offices probably on the second floor, certainly on a floor above the cells. He was not very badly ill-treated, as the offices had walls painted in white and there was a risk of traces being left. However, interrogations also took place during the night, in his own cell, whose walls were painted in black. There, he would be very badly beaten. During one of the beatings some of his teeth were broken. As a result of the beatings the applicant was left with a disabled kidney.

9. The applicant was also subjected to psychological torture. He was told that Cossacks had come to his flat and kidnapped his wife and two daughters, and then raped them, that his wife and one of the daughters had been found and taken to the psychiatric hospital, but that the second daughter had not been found. He was then asked to give in and sign a confession. Three days later Mr. Gorbov came back and told him that his second daughter had been found dead and urged the applicant to sign so that he could go home and give his daughter a Christian burial. The applicant lost control of himself and hit Gorbov. As a result, he was seriously ill-treated.

10. During his detention in the charge of the Fourteenth Army, the applicant was subjected to four mock executions.

11. In all, the applicant was detained at the military garrison of the Fourteenth Army for two months. On 23 August Mr Bergman introduced the applicant to the new commander of the Fourteenth Army, Alexandr Lebed. After a couple of minutes of discussions between the applicant and Mr Lebed the new commander of the Fourteenth Army gave Mr Bergman two hours to remove the applicants from there. On the same day Mr Bergman, accompanied by five or six officers and four soldiers of the Fourteenth Army with automatic weapons and a dog called Ceank, took the applicant in a truck to the Tiraspol City Police headquarters. The applicant was left in a corridor. Mr Bergman told Mr Shevtsov in an angry tone that he did not want to keep the applicants in the territory of the Fourteenth Army any more and went away.

12. The applicant was detained in the basement of the Tiraspol City Police headquarters for about half a year, and was then transferred to Tiraspol Prison no. 2 until his conviction. During the investigation he was with other detainees in a cell.

13. A week after his conviction, on 9 December 1993 the applicant was transferred to Hlinaia Prison in a cell specially prepared for death penalty convicts. He stayed nine years alone in a cell.

There he was subjected to very harsh treatment. He was beaten many times. He was given bread and tea to eat, with cornmeal at lunch. He was also frequently put in a punishment cell. The applicant weighed 95 kilos when arrested and only 57 kilos six months later. He was not allowed to see his family on a regular basis or to receive parcels. Food parcels sent to the applicant were sometimes destroyed. Every visit had to be approved. Sometimes approvals were not granted, sometimes they were granted but when his wife reached the gates of the prison she was not allowed to see him. He was not allowed to write, so that he had to use other means to send messages out of prison. As he wanted his mother to come and visit him, he was told that he should write a special request to Mr Smirnov. The applicant refused, because he did not recognise the “MRT”, and so he was not allowed to see his mother, who died while he was in prison.

14. After the applicant had cast his vote in the Moldovan parliament for the formation of the Sturza Government, there was an immediate effect on his visits: from April 1999 until January 2000 he was not allowed to see his family. From then on he was punished constantly on all sorts of pretexts – for example, his radio was taken away.

15. There was no heating in winter because there was no technical possibility for this. The temperature went down to -10^o Celsius. The applicant did not have a shower for six months and had to wash in cold water. There was no toilet, no decent conditions.

He had no access to information. He was alone. No one else was present when he exercised in the evening. He ate on his own in the cell. He was even forbidden to talk to the guards. He could only speak to the secret service people and to Mr Golovachev. He had no access to daylight or even to an electric lamp.

16. When the applicant asked for treatment from the prison doctor he was told that there were no medicines. The only medicines were brought by the applicant's wife. The doctors who examined the applicant came from Chişinău.

17. The applicant never complained to the Tiraspol authorities because he refused to recognise them; he addressed his complaints only to the legal authorities in Chişinău.

18. In July 1998, after the applicant had made several attempts to escape, he was transferred to Tiraspol Prison no. 2, which was better guarded.

The treatment in the Tiraspol Prison was sometimes better, sometimes worse than in the Hlinaia Prison.

19. There was a toilet in the cell, and cold water. Not all the prison guards were hostile to the applicant, but the people from the security brigade under Mr Shevtsov ill-treated him. The Prison Governor and the guards were relatively correct with him. Colonel Golovachev, the Governor of the Prison, said, “I cannot stop the secret services ill-treating you.”

20. In April 1999 the applicant lodged his application with the European Court of Human Rights. Initially, when the Tiraspol authorities got to hear of the application, he was treated much more harshly. There was no beating as such, but he was denied visits by his wife, books addressed to him in prison were seized, he was not allowed out of his cell for exercise, there were frequent searches of his cell, and so on. This also occurred after he had been visited in prison by the French Parliamentarian Josette Durrieux, who had advised the applicant to submit an application in the first place.

During the same period there was also an incident in which he was ill-treated by Mr Gusarov and some people from the secret services. He asked why he was subjected to such rigorous searches, but was dragged out of his cell and hit with the butt of a gun. One of the secret service men stuck a gun in his mouth, broke his teeth, and threatened him that there would be more of the same if he pursued his application with the European Court. Mr Ivanţoc was subjected to the same treatment by Mr Gusarov.

21. The secret services came from time to time to ask him to withdraw the application. Then, on the morning of 5 May 2001, his cell door was opened. He was given five minutes to get his things together. He was naked while two Transdniestrian television stations were shooting the whole sequence of events in his cell, although he had asked them not to do this. He was being taken to see Mr Smirnov, he was told, because representatives from the West wanted to see him. There were five or six civilians in the corridor, some of them members of the Supreme Soviet of Transdniestria, others with guns.

He was put into a car with Mr Shevtsov. When they came to territory controlled by Chişinău the applicant was handcuffed to two soldiers. He was taken to the presidential palace in Chişinău, and then to the Ministry of Security. Mr Shevtsov took out a paper declaring that the detainee Ilaşcu had been transferred to the authorities of Moldova. He told the applicant that the sentence of death was still valid and that he did not want to see him again. The applicant was then taken to the office of the Minister of Security of Moldova and questioned.

22. As regards the so-called pardon, Mr Balala came to see the applicant two days before his release in order to speak of it. However, the applicant refused the offer of a pardon because the Transdniestrians wanted an acknowledgement of guilt on his part.

23. After his release the applicant spoke to the secret services of Moldova and Romania about his colleagues who remained behind in prison in Transdniestria. They told him that there had been pressure from the Council of Europe and its Parliamentary Assembly on the Russian President, Mr. Putin.

24. The applicant was under the impression that the Russians were behind his release, as they had said that they would ask the Transdniestrians to release him. The Romanian President Mr Iliescu even called Mr Putin. The applicant claims that Shevtsov is a Russian citizen, a representative of the Russian secret service.

25. As regards the attitude of the Moldovan authorities concerning his release, the applicant claims that thirty-three persons arrested by the Transdniestrians were exchanged for Cossacks arrested by Moldova. In June 1992 he was about to be exchanged as a result of an agreement with President Yeltsin. Negotiations were going on, about customs stamps, economic relations and exchanges of prisoners, especially sick prisoners. However, the applicant claims that in his case the Moldovan authorities did not really do all that they could have done.

26. The authorities of the Russian Federation are responsible for what happens in Transdniestria. The Russian Federation is the successor of the Soviet Union. In 1992 there was no Soviet Union. The war was between Russia and Moldova.

The Fourteenth Army participated in the aggression against Moldova, it supplied arms to the Transdniestrian forces – machine guns, tanks, armoured vehicles, guided rocket systems. There is only one armed headquarters force in Transdniestria, and that is the headquarters of the Fourteenth Army. Shots were fired from there towards the battlefields. General Lebed fought against Moldova, but he saved the applicant's life, as he refused to deliver the applicant to the Transdniestrians who came to get him, after losing lives on the battlefield.

The Supreme Soviet of Transdniestria had taken the whole Fourteenth Army under its authority. General Lebed was even elected as a Member of the Transdniestrian Parliament. Russian staff from the Fourteenth Army were leading the military operations and members of the Transdniestrian armed forces were involved only symbolically. When General Iakovlev was arrested before the conflict and taken to Chişinău, it was on suspicion of having armed units in Transdniestria with weapons from the Fourteenth Army. The applicant was told by Mr. Leşco, who worked in a factory, that arms had been brought to the factory by the Fourteenth Army to arm the workers there.

All along the Russian Federation has been maintaining Transdniestria. It supports the Transdniestrian regime militarily, politically and economically. It supplies natural gas free of charge to Transdniestria, it has given Transdniestria 70 to 80 million US dollars of credit, it has kept its markets open for Transdniestria. Mr Smirnov has received military medals from Russia. The Russian Federation protects this illegal regime, even in the proceedings in Strasbourg. The applicant considers that this is not an ethnic conflict, but a political conflict. The territory of Transdniestria is under the control of the Russian Federation.

27. As regards the Moldovan authorities, it is true that the Transdniestrian authorities were hostile to them. According to the applicant, the Transdniestrians are Fascists, imperialists. The applicant was prepared to withdraw his application to the European Court of Human Rights against Moldova on condition that the Moldovan authorities produced to him documents describing the participation of the Russian authorities in the events of 1991 to 1992. The applicant knows that they have such material – documents, video tapes of interviews of Russian officers captured, and so on. The applicant claims that Mr Morei, the Minister of Justice, told him that the Moldovan Government could not agree to this because the Russian Federation was supplying natural gas to Moldova.

28. The applicant complains that one of the witnesses that he wished to call, Mrs. Olga Căpăţînă, was beaten up and had to be hospitalised.

29. The Moldovan authorities did allow the applicant to act as a Member of Parliament although he had been sentenced and was in prison. However, the secret services of the Government that came to power after 1992 abandoned the applicant and his colleagues. It did nothing to secure their release. When the applicant was released Mr Valeriu Pasat said, jokingly, “Some politicians are now trying to emigrate.” President Snegur said that the applicant was too much in favour of integration with Romania. The Moldovan parliament did adopt several resolutions in the applicants' favour, including one calling for Mr. Ilaşcu to be released. But the Executive did nothing to act on this. The Parliament did ask for international bodies to intervene, but it could not oblige the Executive to act. Moldova has not exercised any control over the territory of Transdniestria from 1992 to the present day.

30. In June 1992 she was living in Tiraspol. She was not at home when her husband was arrested. She heard on the radio on 3 June that a terrorist group headed by Ilie Ilaşcu had been arrested. On 4 June she went to the militia where she was told that the name of Leşco did not appear in their ledger. For three days she had no news. On 6 June Starojouk, a public prosecutor, said to her, “I cannot tell you anything.” She went to see another prosecutor, but she was not allowed into his office; she was physically thrown out. She went back to the militia office where Starojouk confirmed that her husband had been arrested but gave no reason. On 8 June Starojouk received the witness in his office. He said that her husband had been arrested for committing terrorist offences. Although the witness had been married for twelve years, there had never been a word about terrorism during all those twelve years. On 9 June she was not allowed to see her husband. On 10 June she was taken to the basement; there was a terrible stench. She did not recognise him; his hair was unkempt; he resembled a skeleton.

31. As to the arrest, the neighbours told her that it had occurred at 3.30 a.m. in the morning. A search of the apartment was carried out on 3 June. Her husband told her that people in uniform had come to arrest him. Four people. He could not see who did it. The janitor of the apartment building had called him. He had been told to get dressed and leave with them. He was arrested by a police officer, a Mr Gusan. He was taken in a Volga car and jeep with Mr Gusan and six other people. He was interrogated by Mr Gorbov and Mr Antiufeev, who is now a member of the Transdniestrian Government. He was held at the militia building where arrested civilians are taken. For six days there was nothing in the register about him.

When the witness saw her husband in the militia building, Starojouk was also there, in a separate office. The witness did not know if Ilaşcu was there as well. She did not know Ilaşcu personally. When she saw her husband for the first time he had done nothing but eat, wolfing down half a chicken, and he had drunk a lot of water. He said that they had not given him anything to eat or drink.

32. The witness had a second meeting with him after a month or so. In the meantime she had not been allowed to see him or to give him any food. She had taken his dirty clothes away with her; they were full of vermin. His shirt was stained in the area of the kidneys. He had obviously been beaten up. The next meeting, after a month or so, was in the same building, in the basement again. And then there was another meeting after a further two months in Starojouk's office.

33. The witness's husband told her that he had spent about a month at the headquarters of the Russian Fourteenth Army, at the Commandatura. He said it had been horrible. Three soldiers had kicked him in the chest and groin; he had passed blood in his urine; one of the soldiers had made a lewd suggestion. He had been taken to the lavatory once a day, allowed only 45 seconds to relieve himself, and then a dog was sent in and he was pushed back to his cell. He was not allowed to wash there was no water to wash with. There was no food or water. He did not know the names of the people who had ill-treated him. They had not introduced themselves. They were wearing the military uniform of the Russian Special Troops. They were heavily muscled men from the Fourteenth Army.

The witness's husband told her that when he was in the Commandatura of the Fourteenth Army it was the militia men who had the keys to the cell. The attack on him had occurred when the guards got drunk with three soldiers. The guards gave the soldiers the keys for some reason. It was then that the soldiers broke into his cell, assaulted him and tried to rape him.

34. At the Commandatura he saw Ilie Ilaşcu being subjected to what turned out to be a mock execution. He saw Ilie Ilaşcu being led out, blindfolded; he heard the guns firing and then saw traces of bullets on the wall. But he then learnt that Ilie Ilaşcu was alive. The witness's husband mentioned to her two names: Gorbov and Antiufeev. He said that, after the Commandatura, they came to interrogate him every night back at the militia centre. Colonel Bergman was the commandant at the Commandatura. They saw one another at the Commandatura.

35. After his conviction in 1993 the witness's husband was taken to Tiraspol Prison No. 2. That was the only prison where he had been detained. The first time that the witness was able to visit her husband there was after three months. She was allowed to leave food for him. After the trial she had regular meetings with him once a month, as laid down in the Criminal Code, through a glass screen. Letters were opened, but they did not correspond too often. Twice a year a long meeting was granted. Parcels were not always allowed. He was kept in an individual cell. There was no beating up, but he was subjected to moral pressure. The witness herself was called a Romanian prostitute. The guards would ask her, “Why did you sell out to Romania when you are a Russian?” There was ill-treatment of her husband in the militia building, but not in prison. The food in prison often had worms in it. She was sometimes allowed to bring in large food parcels.

Her husband has never said anything much about medical treatment in prison. He had a pancreatic crisis when the witness was there once. He was foaming at the mouth. She had to wait all day for any kind of treatment to arrive. In the end a doctor came and said that he needed an operation, otherwise he would die. He was made to walk with handcuffs and manacles on, despite his condition. The doctor gave the witness a list of medicines to get. The operation had been a success. He was manacled to the bed in hospital, despite being on an intravenous drip. The witness was allowed to visit him in hospital once a day but there were four armed guards present all the time. His stay in hospital had lasted two weeks.

36. The witness claims that her husband did not receive any orders or instructions from the Moldovan authorities before he was arrested in 1992. She was with him all the time. He was a member of the Popular Front. After her husband's arrest they had to leave their residence. She went to plead with the factory-owner, but he said, “You must leave the flat, you are a terrorist's wife.” After ten days a woman with a child came to occupy the flat. The witness was chased away and went to Chişinău. Six months after the event she was given a hotel room by the Popular Front. Whenever she went to Tiraspol to visit her husband she stayed with a friend. Then eventually she was given a room as a refugee.

37. The witness was living in Tiraspol on 2 June 1992. She had not heard anything at all about a so-called Ilaşcu group before her husband was detained. They lived in Tiraspol and felt at home there.

38. Her husband was arrested there when he was on his own. He told her that many armed people had entered the apartment, smashed their belongings, and beaten him unconscious. The persons who burst in were wearing black uniforms. Her husband was taken to the basement of the militia building in Tiraspol. The witness met him two days after his arrest. He was bruised on the forehead, the nail on one of his fingers was missing, and he was very dirty. They were forbidden to speak to one another in Romanian, but had to use Russian.

The witness met him in the office of the investigating offices, in the presence of three or four other people. It was a short meeting and it had been impossible for them to communicate properly. It was many weeks before the witness could send him a food parcel.

39. From the militia building the prisoners were transferred to the Fourteenth Army Commandatura and then back to the militia building. Before their trial they were in either one or the other of these places. The witness had one short meeting with her husband during the period when he was being held at the Commandatura. She did not know that he was being held there. When she was in the militia building she saw him being brought into the building from a Volga car and it was then that Andrei told her, “We're being held at the Commandatura. ” At that particular time they were refused any meetings. Before meetings he was prepared and cleaned up, so that the family would not see all the damage. “Boxers” were used in the basement to beat the detainees up. They had to speak in the Russian language and always in their presence.

40. The conditions in the Commandatura were terrible. It was painful for the applicant to talk about it. He was kept alone in a cell; at midnight a bed was brought down from the wall for them to sleep on, but they were kept up during the whole day and so were not able to sleep properly. They were taken out to the toilet once a day, for a very short period; if they had not managed to relieve themselves in this very short period, dogs were let loose on them. They were not given much food. Ilaşcu and the others were detained there at the same time but in separate cells; the witness's husband was blindfolded when he was let out of the cell. The applicant told the witness that he had been kept in the Commandatura for two months, from July until August 1992. He was interrogated day and night; sometimes he was not allowed to sleep because the interrogations went on all night. He did not specifically tell the witness who interrogated him. The guards were from the Fourteenth Army. Gorbov, Starojouk and one other took part in the interrogation. He also mentioned the name of Bergman, but the witness could not remember exactly what he said in this connection.

41. When he was held in police custody in Tiraspol the witness's husband was threatened with a sentence of death. The order was read out to him; he was taken out to be shot, and told, “Why do you want to bother about visits by your family if you are to be shot tomorrow?” There were times when he could not recognise the witness. Before his trial he was treated with psychotropic substances, so that his nervous system broke down. As a result, even today he suffers with constant headaches. His chronic diseases have got worse. He was in hospital for ten days before his trial. While detained in the militia building he was sent to Odessa for a psychiatric examination. He had not had any psychiatric examination until then. The findings of the Odessa examination had been destroyed. She knows from hearsay that he was kept naked on a concrete surface, but she cannot personally confirm that he tried to hang himself.

42. Following the trial in 1993, the witness next saw her husband after a month as soon as she received the permission to meet him. Whenever events got worse, that affected visits. She was not able to visit her husband freely; she had to write to Mr Shevtsov to get approval. For a long time she was not allowed to give him newspapers in Romanian, but only in Russian. She could not correspond with him. He was kept in solitary confinement, in the toughest wing of the prison. It was very damp; there was a leaking roof and no daylight. There was permanent psychological pressure on him. In 1999 he was the victim of a physical attack when masked persons entered his cell, hit him with sticks and beat him up. Everything in his cell was broken and his personal effects were taken away. This is the time when he went on hunger strike. The 1999 incident occurred when the applicant's husband lodged his application with the European Court of Human Rights, or even before – when the Sturza Government was elected. He was not allowed to stay quietly in his cell, as there was a period of time when everyday someone tried to exert psychological pressure on him.

43. The witness complained to various Moldovan authorities. She did not approach the Ministry of Justice directly. Together with the other wives, she approached the President of the Republic and the Ministry dealing with the Transdniestria issues. In reply, they were assured that negotiations were under way and things would be back to normal soon. This was so even when they applied to the Prosecutor General. But nothing ever came of these representations. The applicants' wives also applied to the Ombudsman, but they were told that he could not go deeper into the case because he did not have sufficient power. The other side was not subject to his authority, and everything depended on higher authorities – in other words, the President's Office and the State authorities.

The OSCE mission visited her husband in prison after these representations in 1999.

44. There was no proper access to medical assistance in the prison. The witness insisted that a doctor from Chişinău go to see him in the prison in Tiraspol. He had a liver condition, high blood pressure and a kidney condition. The witness brought all the medicine from home, as no medical care was dispensed in prison.

45. On 15 February 2003 the witness was refused permission to see her husband, but she managed to see him one week later. He told her that again people had burst into his cell and broken all his personal effects.

46. Although Andrei Ivanţoc needs a special diet, he does not receive what he needs. He cooks food for himself, from the parcels delivered to him by his family. The prison authorities in Tiraspol refused him access to a psychiatrist. Recently, however, a group of doctors from Chişinău had visited him, but they were then barred from presenting their written report to him. The prison doctor was present during this examination, together with three or four persons from the security service.

47. The witness is not aware of her husband ever having received any instructions from the Republic of Moldova. There were no persons from the Republic of Moldova present during his interrogation, just persons from Tiraspol. Her feeling is that the Moldovan authorities could have been more insistent, and in particular could have involved international organisations.

48. In June 1992 the witness was living in Moldova in her parents' village. Her brother was living in Tiraspol. He had been there for six years with his wife and family (his son). The witness was not in Tiraspol when he was arrested; she heard of his arrest one week after the event when his wife telephoned her. The applicant's wife told the witness that people had come at night and arrested him. She further told her that he had been taken to the premises of the Fourteenth Army. The witness saw him for the first time during his trial. She had no opportunity to talk to him, but only spoke to his wife, who told her that he had been ill-treated in custody. After the trial the witness occasionally visited him in prison. She very rarely wrote to him or received letters from him. When the family did send him letters, he frequently said that he had not received anything.

49. The witness's brother was detained in Tiraspol Prison until last year. He did not speak about his treatment in prison. There were always persons present who prevented him during the visits from speaking about matters other than family matters. He sometimes said that he had been taken out of his cell at night or verbally abused. The applicant never spoke about any medical treatment.

50. The witness had not approached the Moldovan authorities on behalf of her brother in order to seek his release; his wife had, but the witness did not know what authorities she had approached. Nor did she know whether the Moldovan authorities had tried to do anything following her brother's arrest and conviction.

51. She brought the application on behalf of her brother. Before the trial she did not know Ilaşcu, Leşco or Ivanţoc.

52. The witness was formerly a permanent resident of Tiraspol. He now lives in Chişinău. He is the Chairman of the Helsinki Human Rights Committee and a Professor at the Tiraspol State University with its headquarters in Chişinău.

53. By June 1992 he had been living in Tiraspol for nineteen years. He knew Ilaşcu and Ivanţoc but not Leşco or Petrov-Popa. He had been a member of the Popular Front. But in 1992 Ilaşcu had published a statement saying that the witness was excluded from the Popular Front for expressing pro-Snegur views.

54. He was arrested on 2 June 1992, twelve hours after Ilaşcu. He did not know who the people arresting him were. He later came to understand that the public prosecutor Luchik and Colonel Bergman, the Fourteenth Army commander, were behind it. Luchik had been the Moldovan Prosecutor of the city of Tiraspol. Then the separatists had converted him into the Prosecutor of the “Transdniestrian Moldovan Republic”.

55. The people arresting the witness were not in uniform. When he was arrested, there were some vehicles from the Russian Army surrounding his house. He was taken to the militia building in Tiraspol. He did not see Bergman himself, but he saw the army vehicles and was told by those arresting him that Bergman was involved.

56. The witness was held in the militia building from 2 June until 21 August 1992. He saw Ilaşcu there through a crack in the door, but for most of the time Ilaşcu was kept at the Fourteenth Army building for security reasons. Opposite the witness's cell were Leşco, Ilaşcu, Ivanţoc and the others, except for the time when the applicants were taken to the Fourteenth Army. The main six detainees were kept there until September 1992. Over 30 people had been arrested in the operation. At one point the witness heard the scream of a crazy person. It was Ivanţoc, because they had told him that he was to be shot that day.

57. The witness talked to Leşco, who said that the conditions in the militia building were quite good compared to those at the Fourteenth Army. The other prisoner who was sharing the witness's cell also told him that his colleagues had been taken to the Fourteenth Army because the security was much stricter there. All this was done when the fighting was going on in Bender.

58. He was told by those who were detained at the Commandatura that their beds were raised against the wall at 5 or 6 a.m., that they were given no food, that there was no light in their cell, and so on. Leşco also told him that they were subjected to mock executions.

59. The witness received a letter from a potential witness at the trial saying that he had been warned that if he kept to his testimony that Ilaşcu had been beaten, he would lose his job. He is now in detention. A person who gave evidence at the 1993 trial in Tiraspol was summoned by the Tiraspol authorities and asked if he would give the same evidence now.

60. During his detention in the militia building, the witness was interrogated by Shevtsov, or Antiufeev as he now calls himself. The witness was Chairman of the Committee for Human Rights created in 1990 and had access to information concerning the situation in Transdniestria. Many people came to see them for information. The constitutional Moldovan authorities avoided responsibility for what the separatists were doing. Shevtsov, whom the witness did not know at the time, was a better-trained professional than any Moldovan would have been. The witness told him that he gave the impression of being from Russia – because of his Moscow accent and because of his being so professional at his job. When he saw Shevtsov later on the television, he realised who he was. He was the person who had organised the attack on the Riga television tower in 1991. He and the eleven colleagues who accompanied him to Tiraspol had created a network in the Baltic Republics, but they were then ordered by Moscow to Tiraspol. He used to be called by the name of Antiufeev, but in his fourth passport he had the name Shevtsov. He does not conceal now that Antiufeev and Shevtsov are one and the same person.

61. The witness was interrogated only once in the presence of a lawyer. Another time he was interrogated at night by Mr Gorbov and another. They ill-treated him and tried to get him to sign a document, but he refused.

62. The witness was not tried. He was released after 82 days of detention. He does not know why he was released, although he was subject to the same charges of terrorism. During the applicants' trial the witness sent a telegram to the President of the so-called Supreme Court of Transdniestria, Mrs Ivanova, asking to be heard by the court. He was refused. The answer given was that he was a criminal who deserved to be in the cage with Ilaşcu, and he could not be heard as a witness. Prosecutor Lukiç, whom the witness contacted, told him he could not protect him a second time.

63. He had been released on signing an undertaking that he would not leave Tiraspol. Starojouk drove him to his home in Tiraspol. No personal belongings had been taken from his apartment. The witness promised not to make statements to the press. He was contacted by the Memorial group in Odessa, who invited him to Odessa. When he asked for permission to go to Ukraine, he was first refused, but in the end he obtained that permission. However, the witness fled to Chişinău instead of going to Ukraine.

64. The witness stated that Ivanţoc's house had been surrounded by military vehicles and he had concluded that the Fourteenth Army and Colonel Bergman took part in the arrest.

65. General Iakovlev had previously been arrested by the Moldovan authorities for providing arms to the separatists. The witness had seen the register, detailing how much weaponry had been given and to whom. It was given to people in their homes so that they could resist the constitutional forces of Moldova. As regards the arrest of General Iakovlev, the witness had heard that Mr. Ilaşcu was there to confirm to the arresting officers that they had the right person. Iakovlev was in plain clothes and about to flee to Odessa because he suspected that he was about to be arrested.

66. General Iakovlev was subsequently exchanged for 28 Moldovans. On another occasion, 23 Moldovan policemen were exchanged for 23 paramilitary soldiers. Groups of 25 to 35 people were regularly sent from Transdniestria to Moscow to be trained in military and security matters, in order to create battalions. The witness knew about this from the soldiers.

67. After his release, the witness had visited Tiraspol several times. Once he was part of a delegation of the Helsinki Committee. Another time he went there without warning the Transdniestrian guards.

68. The witness considers that Moldova did not and does not do all that it can to ensure compliance with Moldovan legislation for the 600,000 hostages that are being held in Transdniestria by the separatist regime.

69. Concerning the Russian involvement in the events, the witness stated the following. High-placed Russian personalities had visited Tiraspol as early as 1989 when the first law on languages in Moldova was adopted. Russian officials had also come to Chişinău. The Moscow Institute of International Relations had developed the idea of Transdniestria in case Moldova did not accept some degree of cultural autonomy. The creation of a tribunal to prosecute Moldova for violating humanitarian law had been mooted. The KGB forces were at this time out of control in Moscow; they were seeking to keep the Soviet empire in existence. It was Nikolai Midveev, member of a Russian Federation Parliamentary Committee, who requested the release of Smirnov when he was being held in detention. He offered certain guarantees for Smirnov's release, for instance, Smirnov would not continue to destroy the Moldovan State structures, he would not contravene the legislation of Moldova, and the Russian Federation would ratify the Moldovan-Russian Agreement. However, this agreement was not ratified until 2001, when the Communist Party regime came to power in Moldova. Behind these manoeuvres were the FSB, the Cossacks and other structures created by Russia whenever it was a question of a territory where they wanted to keep control.

70. On the day of the witness's arrest, when he was taken to the security service, he saw an important person coming out of the building. It was Makashov. He had visited the separatist republic and said that with such weaponry they would not be able to fight the Romanian fascists, that he was going to send them better arms and that Russia would help. Material was sent later from Russia, around one hundred units of Radio-Guided Anti-Tank Missiles, but only fifteen of them reached Tiraspol. Then there were the declarations of Mr Dakov, the Tiraspol Minister of Light Industries. He had admitted that the Fourteenth Army used to wear the uniform of the separatists or civilian clothing when fighting on the side of the separatists. Soldiers of the Fourteenth Army had been killed in the fighting. For instance, in about April 1992 an officer and four soldiers of the Fourteenth Army had been killed in the war. Their bodies had been brought from the front to be sent to the Russian Federation, and the witness and his students had seen them, as they had participated in the farewell ceremony.

71. The Cossack troops who had taken part in the fighting were mobilised by the Russian Federation when it realised that the territorial integrity of the Soviet Union could not be maintained. The Cossacks had arrived in 1990. Russia said that this was a private initiative, not linked to the authorities. They lived in hotels. In 1992, on 1 or 2 March when the war started, their objective had been to prevent Moldova joining the United Nations. In Bender and Dubăsari, where there remained the last constitutional police station, the last place in Transdniestria where Moldova was maintaining a law-enforcement presence, there was an assault organised by Rateyev, one of the Cossacks. He was a member of the Alpha Group, which was one of the leading Russian security groups.

72. In 1993 the separatist regime set up a parliament. General Lebed was elected to the Supreme Soviet. General Lebed himself declared that he was the one who guaranteed the independence of the Transdniestrian Republic, and that he had caused a few shots to be fired on a number of occasions from “Grad” launching pads in the direction of Moldovan territory. After that, Lebed said, President Snegur had agreed to sit at the negotiation table with Smirnov.

73. During the war, the Transdniestrian side had tanks and armoured vehicles bearing the emblem of the Russian army – the witness had seen that himself – in addition to the Cossack troops. The witness went to Bender once. When he crossed the bridge on foot he saw many tanks carrying the Russian three-coloured flag. On other tanks the separatist flag was flying. He asked why Russian troops and separatist troops were there and he was told that both had taken part in the shooting. At a meeting held at the Ministry of Defence in Chişinău, where the negotiations took place, the witness made a statement in front of the ministers of foreign affairs present, including Mr Kozyrev and Mr Netkachiov, who was the Commander of the Fourteenth Army at that time. The witness told them he would lodge a protest because the Fourteenth Army was directly involved in the war. The participants in the negotiations replied that they would leave for Bender and try to gain evidence of that themselves.

74. After his release the witness did all that he could to get the remaining six freed. They represented a symbol for the Transdniestrian regime, to discourage others from expressing political views. He was told by Prosecutor Irtenev that Moscow was interested in securing the release of people held by the Moldovan authorities. Prosecutor Irtenev told the witness that Moldova had been cheated, in that other, less important people had been released, but not the witness's six colleagues. Moldova released everyone, whether Russian or from Tiraspol, who had taken part in the fighting, whereas the Tiraspol regime had not released everyone, had not responded in kind.

75. The witness did not know why he was arrested or why he was released. There was a letter from the Moldovan Ministry of Education asking for his release, the Ministry undertaking to ensure that the witness would be present for the purposes of the investigation. The witness possessed much information about the separatists, and for that reason he was not a convenient witness for the trial. Alex Kokotkin, a journalist for a Russian newspaper, had tried, before his arrest, to convince him of the benefits of collaborating with the separatist regime. The witness had seen him later in the office of the investigators, acting as if he was a boss. Kokotkin told him that additional Russian troops had been brought in to secure Transdniestrian independence; they were called peace-keeping troops. This journalist might have played a significant role in obtaining the witness's release.

76. The witness also stated that he could name the persons who had gone to Moscow for military training for membership of a Dniester battalion. He knew who did the recruitment and where they went. He also knew the Russian secret services who installed special telephone devices for tapping official Moldovan telephone calls.

77. The witness is the Director of the Surgical Clinic at the State University, Chişinău. He has been in Transdniestria lecturing and teaching; he also had professional relations there.

78. He was requested by the Ministry of Health of Moldova to examine the Ilaşcu group in prison in Tiraspol. The Moldovan authorities in Chişinău even provided him with a car to go to the prison in Transdniestria. He would not have gone to examine these prisoners if he had not been invited to do so by the Moldovan Ministry of Health. There he carried out the examination, together with doctors from Tiraspol, and then he discussed with them the diagnosis and the treatment.

79. When he examined the applicants, Ilaşcu was in Hlinaia, the others were in Tiraspol Prison. The prisoners made no complaints about the Russian Federation. They only discussed medical matters in fact. The witness did not see any signs of beatings, bruises or ill-treatment when he examined the prisoners. The level of medical assistance in prisons was very simple; there was no equipment, but Chişinău prisons looked very much like the prisons in Transdniestria.

80. He saw Mr Ilaşcu himself only once. He looked like an ordinary prisoner, but he did have a disorder of the digestive tract. However, his condition did not necessitate any intervention by a surgeon; no surgery was necessary, and so he was treated by a gastro-enterologist.

81. The witness examined Mr Leşco when he was in hospital recovering from pancreatitis, after he had undergone a surgical operation. He was invited to examine Mr Leşco because he was recognised as an expert on this condition. Mr Leşco was introduced to him by the doctor who had operated on him earlier. He had seen the applicant in hospital, when he was suffering from acute pancreatitis. This is a severe condition, with a mortality of 20 to 30%. He also saw him later, when he was suffering from chronic pancreatitis, which often follows acute pancreatitis. He could have acquired pancreatitis during his childhood, although acute pancreatitis could also be the result of stressful conditions. The witness and a team of doctors, led by Dr. S. Leşanu, examined the applicant and recommended further treatment.

82. The witness saw Mr Ivanţoc in prison. He detected changes in his liver by means of an ultrasound examination and liquid in the abdominal cavity, which is a sign of high blood pressure.

83. The witness made his notes on the applicants' cases on sheets of paper provided by the prison doctors. They kept these notes for their archives. The witness then made his own report for his own personal purposes. He last went there over a year ago.

84. There is freedom of movement of doctors from Moldova to Transdniestria and vice-versa.

85. The witness is the chief doctor on curative issues at the State Hospital of the Republic of Moldova. Until seven years ago he was working as adviser to the President of Moldova and was his personal physician. At his request he was sent to Tiraspol to see the three applicants detained there and to Hlinaia Prison to see Mr. Ilaşcu. The wife of Mr Ilaşcu had made representations to the President who, as a result, had done what he could to help. As part of his help he sent the witness to examine the applicants in prison in Transdniestria. As adviser to the President, the witness could talk to the local authorities in Transdniestria.

86. The witness went to Transdniestria six times in all. The President and the relatives of the applicants were worried about their medical state in prison. The witness had to keep the President informed of their medical condition. He usually took other doctors with him, for example, Professor Ţîbîrnă and a gastro-enterologist.

88. The medical notes made on the applicants were left behind with the prison authorities there. The team of doctors insisted that the prison medical service should follow their recommendations, which concerned the applicants' medical treatment, medication and diet.

89. Mr. Ilaşcu said that he did not trust the prison authorities or the prison medical service, as he was afraid of having drugs administered to him by the prison authorities. He accepted medicine supplied by the family or by the doctors coming from Chişinău.

90. The examinations that the witness's team had carried out in Transdniestria were joint examinations with the doctors there. The applicants detained in Tiraspol Prison were subject to a freer regime than in Hlinaia Prison. In Tiraspol Prison there was a medical unit and only doctors were present during medical examinations.

91. At Hlinaia Prison the regime was stricter. There was always someone from the prison service standing by, as well as the doctors.

92. The witness and his team found no evidence either of physical ill-treatment or of the administration of psychotropic drugs.

93. The witness visited the applicants for the last time in 1997 or thereabouts. He refused to go after that, despite a request from the Ministry of Justice, because he no longer had the powers that he used to have when he was the President's adviser.

94. On the morning of 2 June 1992, nine or ten members of the special forces came in cars and arrested him. They were military people in plain clothes, wearing masks. In the group that arrested him he saw a lieutenant from the Russian special forces. They beat him up and took him to a basement at the pre-trial detention centre, which was a militia building. The applicant had never been there before – that is to say, the building where the basement was. He cannot say how long he spent there. He was blindfolded; there was no light. It may have been one hour, one day, but no more. He did not see Leşco or Ilaşcu in the militia building. He saw them later at the Commandatura.

95. He was then taken to the Commandatura of the Fourteenth Army. There he was interrogated by military people. Upstairs there were special elite troops and Alpha troops. Colonel Bergman was the commander of the Fourteenth Army. The applicant saw him personally, but Colonel Bergman did not interrogate him.

96. The conditions at the Commandatura were inhuman. Detainees were beaten up day and night by the marines and by Special Forces, who used batons and boots. They would throw green gas capsules into the cells. The applicants were detained in different cells. There were also other people detained there, including Mr Godiac. The conditions of detention there were very bad. They were taken to the toilet once every 24 hours and chased out by a dog if they did not finish in the time allotted to them. At that point the applicant wanted to hang himself.

Then he was administered drugs. He was delirious; he imagined things. His psychiatric problems resulted from his beatings.

The guards at the Commandatura, like everything there, were under the control of the Fourteenth Army. The special forces and marines all had Russian insignia on their uniforms. It was the Russian special forces and marines who beat them up saying that they were Romanian peasants. They had Russian emblems on their uniforms. The applicant thought that they were Russian marines because they had the berets and shirts of marines with Russian emblems on them.

The worst ill-treatment he suffered was at the Commandatura. It was total savagery.

97. From the Commandatura of the Fourteenth Army he was taken to a psychiatric hospital in Tiraspol, where he spent one month. They then took him from the hospital back to the Commandatura, but as Colonel Bergman told the guardsmen that he did not want him there, he was taken back to the pre-trial detention centre. The applicant does not know how long Ilaşcu and Leşco were held at the Commandatura after he left. He next saw them at the trial in the autumn.

98. After September 1992, when he and the others were transferred to the basement of the pre-trial centre, they were also beaten up. They were taken out day and night. This was done in a special room, an investigation room. The applicant was beaten up until he lost consciousness, he was drugged, and his head was banged against the wall, or squeezed between the door and the wall. That was done by people from the Transdniestrian side.

99. After the trial they were only occasionally beaten up. The applicants complained to the OSCE. Mr Antiufeev was the head of all that. At one point a Ministerial Commission came to investigate. The applicants were not examined by doctors. In any event, the prison authorities isolated them until the bruises were gone. The OSCE Commission came one month later, after the beatings, but there were not many traces left by then.

100. The worst period of ill-treatment was in 1992, when they came to the applicant's cell and to Ilaşcu's. It was Antiufeev and Gusarov who were the prime movers.

101. Currently the applicant is in solitary confinement: He sees no daylight, and only exercises for two hours a day.

102. The doctors in the prison service were little better than veterinary surgeons. The prison doctor in the applicant's prison was in fact a dentist by profession. Professor Ţîbîrnă had visited the applicant. He had also been visited by other doctors from Tiraspol, including the surgeon who performed an operation on him. These doctors came only because he was ill; they did not come when he was beaten up. The applicant went on hunger strike on one occasion, but couldn't remember if he was examined by doctors then. Two of these medical examinations had taken place in special cells set aside for that purpose.

103. In January 2003 he was in a room where prisoners are allowed long-term meetings. He had never been examined by a doctor in his own cell. During the examinations there was always someone from the prison administration there to check and control.

104. Only relatives are allowed for family visits. Sometimes parcels are allowed, but on occasions there are problems with parcels. The applicants are not permitted to write or receive letters in Romanian or to receive Romanian newspapers. Two weeks before the hearings in February 2003, he had been seen by the Red Cross and, before that, by doctors from the European Committee for the Prevention of Torture.

105. The most recent visit he had had was two weeks before the hearings in February 2003, when he was visited by a lady judge in connection with the Torture Committee.

106. He has no right to correspond with persons outside the prison, whether lawyers or not.

107. In May 1999, while he was in Tiraspol Prison no. 2, after he lodged his application with the European Court of Human Rights, he was subjected to ill-treatment there as well. Military forces came into his cell and beat him up. These were military people under the command of Gusarov and Captain Matrovski and people under Antiufeev/Shevtsov. He was told that if he did not withdraw his application he would be eliminated. Afterwards he went on hunger strike and wrote a complaint; and then a commission of investigation came.

108. The only medical visits he had had were from doctors coming from Chişinău. The prison doctor Lieutenant-Colonel Samsonov was a dentist. The applicant claims that he has not received any services from the prison doctors.

109. His cell and his belongings in it have been damaged. The first time this happened was on 16 November 2002, and the last time was on 22 February 2003 or thereabouts.

110. The applicant considers that everything that has been done to him, and that is now being done to him, has been done at Russian instigation.

111. Lieutenant-Colonel Gorbov had been present at the arrest of Ilaşcu. Moldova did not and does not control the territory of Transdniestria, but the Moldovan authorities could have done more at the time to help them. They did nothing. The militia of Dubăsari were handed over to the Cossacks and beaten up. Russia had played games with Moldova. If this had not happened, Transdniestria would not have existed. So Moldova was responsible. The Chairman of the Russian State Duma, Mr. Selezniov, had come to the Moldovan parliament and said that, if it had not been for Russia, Moldova would have been part of Romania.

113. At the time of the events, in 1992, the applicant had been living in Tiraspol since 1973. On 2 June 1992 he was awakened at 2 a.m. when four armed persons entered his house and arrested him. Among them was a person called Gusan. He was in plain clothes and not armed. He showed the applicant his documents. The others were wearing khaki; they were military personnel and armed. He was taken by car to the detention centre. He was not beaten then; that came later. He had a three-hour interrogation with Shevtsov, also known as Antiufeev, with Gorbov and with a third person whom the applicant did not know. He was then taken to the basement, where he stayed for six days. On the second day he was put in a solitary cell. The interrogations started in earnest. They went on from 2 June until 1 or 2 July. He did not see Ivanţoc or Ilaşcu during that month. During this period he was interrogated and ill-treated.

114. On 1 or 2 July he was taken to the Commandatura building. He was taken there in a car with the Russian emblem on the side and the Russian three-coloured flag on it. The applicant was taken there twice on the same day. The first time it was Delta people, Dniester people. The second time it was different people, Fourteenth Army personnel. They entered the base from a different entrance. He stayed there until 7 or 8 August in solitary confinement. The cells were on the ground floor. The applicant could not see the others – that is, Ilaşcu, Ivanţoc, Godiac. He didn't see Mr Petrov-Popa. And the guards there ill-treated him a few tim

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