Protesters react as doctors treat activist who said he was captured and tortured скачать в хорошем качестве

Protesters react as doctors treat activist who said he was captured and tortured

(31 Jan 2014) Doctors in Kiev said on Friday that an opposition activist, who claimed he was held captive for more than a week and tortured, remained in intensive care but is no longer in a life-threatening condition. Dmytro Bulatov, a member of Automaidan, a group of car owners that has taken part in the protests against President Viktor Yanukovych, went missing on 22 January. Police have opened an investigation into the 35-year-old's kidnapping - the latest in a string of mysterious attacks on anti-government protesters in the two-month-long political crisis. Bulatov was discovered outside Kiev on Thursday. He claimed that his kidnappers beat him severely, drove nails into his hands, sliced off a piece of ear and cut his face. He is also said to have been kept in the dark all the time and could not identify the kidnappers. After more than a week of beatings, he was dumped him in a forest. The Associated Press was not immediately able to interview Bulatov, who was undergoing treatment at Boris Hospital in downtown Kiev. Sergei Poyarkov, a fellow Automaidan activist, told the AP on Friday that his friend's room had been secured, with police officers waiting in the lobby. He said that after being dumped in the snow by his kidnappers Bulatov walked for about 20 minutes and "was knocking on all the doors until someone opened." "He called the first number," Poyarkov explained. "He remembered his driver because his wife was not picking up the phone from unknown numbers." Mikhail Radutskiy, the head of Boris Hospital, said the activist was in a stable condition in intensive care, but should be moved to a regular room soon. "After all the examinations we did, we can tell for sure that Dmytro isn't in a life-threatening condition," he said. Bulatov was among three activists whose disappearances have shocked the country, especially after one of them was found dead. Bulatov went missing one day after Igor Lutsenko, another prominent opposition activist who had also gone missing, was discovered after being taken to the woods and beaten severely by unknown attackers. The disappearances prompted an outcry from protesters, who accused the government of intimidating the opposition. Kateryna Butko, a spokesperson for Automaidan, said that her colleague "had many enemies, especially recently." "He and his family were watched," she added. "One could expect what has happened." Protests in Ukraine started after Yanukovych backed out of an agreement to deepen ties with the European Union in November, but quickly came to encompass an array of discontent over corruption, heavy-handed police and dubious courts. Negotiations between the authorities and the opposition on finding a way out of the crisis appeared to have stalled on Thursday, after Yanukovych took an unexpected sick leave and told opposition leaders that it was now up to them to make concessions. Find out more about AP Archive: http://www.aparchive.com/HowWeWork Twitter:   / ap_archive   Facebook:   / aparchives   ​​ Instagram:   / apnews   You can license this story through AP Archive: http://www.aparchive.com/metadata/you...