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On 10 April 2026, the Odesa District Administrative Court opened proceedings in Case No. 420/9112/26.
The claimant is Dmytro Yagunov, a lawyer, human rights defender, and academic.
The defendants are the Odesa Remand Centre and the South-Central Interregional Directorate for the Enforcement of Criminal Sentences.
Subject of the dispute: refusal to provide basic statistical data on the institution’s operations for the years 2010–2026.
The request comprised nine thematic sections: how many people had died, how many had committed suicide, how many times staff had used physical force, how many people had been placed in solitary confinement, the level of overcrowding in cells, and how many instances of drug use and corruption had been detected. No secrets — just open statistics that the institution is legally obliged to collect every month. The response was a refusal. The reason: the requested information “is not public” because it requires “the creation of new information.”
If the remand centre keeps the number of deaths and the number of solitary confinement punishments secret, this is not merely a failure of transparency that obstructs reform. It is a condition that renders reform impossible.
The respondents’ refusals are deeply self-contradictory. Initially, the respondent extended the consideration period to 20 days due to the “significant volume of information.” Three days later came a refusal: the information “does not exist.” If it does not exist — why did it constitute a “significant volume”? If it does exist — why is it being concealed? Either way, the law is violated.
The defendants cite the ECtHR’s judgment in Magyar Helsinki Bizottság v. Hungary — a judgment in which the state itself lost for refusing access to information. Invoking the precedent of “human rights defenders won” as a justification for their own secrecy is not a legal error. It is manipulation.
Why this case matters regardless of the outcome
When a prison refuses to provide death statistics, it is not merely breaking the law. It perpetuates a cycle of impunity: without data there is no accountability, without accountability there is no reform, and without reform, deaths, violence, corruption, and criminal hierarchies continue unchecked. The CPT has documented serious violations in the Odesa Remand Centre since at least 1998. Not a single recommendation has been fully implemented. Secrecy is not a consequence of the system — it is one of its conditions.
Society funds the Remand Centre through its taxes. It has the right to know how many people are dying behind bars, whether torture takes place there, whether drugs are being used, and whether prisoners take turns sleeping due to a lack of space. This case is about specific figures. But behind the figures are people. And a state that conceals these figures is not merely concealing accountability — it is concealing people.
