MONITORING OF CUSTODIAL SETTINGS IN UKRAINE 56 In the report to the Ukrainian Government on the results of the visit to Ukraine carried out from 24 November to 6 December 2002 the CPT again referred to “a number of recommendations concerning the transport of prisoners by rail road. The matter was raised again in 2002 with the Ukrainian authorities, who stated that a working group had been set up to transfer responsibility for escorting prisoners from the Ministry of Internal Affairs to the Department for the Execution of Sentences. In the light of the critical findings again made by the delegation which carried out the 2002 visit, con- cerning transport vans, the CPT recommends that the Ukrainian authorities give a high priority to resolving the issue of the conditions under which prisoners are transported, with due regard to the recommendations in paragraph 131 of its report on the 2000 visit.” With regard to these conclusions and recommendations of the CPT the European Court of Human Rights in its judgement in Yakovenko v. Ukraine case (of October 25, 2007) found a violation of Article 3 of ECHR and, specifically, called attention to the process of the applicant’s transportation in special rail carriages: – “As regards the rail transport the Court notes that the parties disagreed as to the number of persons which the train compartments usually accommodated. The Court notes that having regard to the permissible space per inmate under the domestic standards for short-term railway journeys of 0.3 square metres … it appears that if in a carriage designed for 104 persons 70 inmates are accommodated the resulting space per inmate is 0.4 square metres, which, as indicated above … is unsuitable for transporting a person on journeys of any length; – The Court further takes into account the CPT's findings that the ventilation in the carriages was poor, food was not provided and water was in short supply; – The Court observes that the applicant had to endure these crammed conditions twice a month on the way to and from the Sevastopol ITT for a period of two years and eight months, thus making about 64 such trips; – The Court finds that the treatment to which the applicant was subjected during his repeated transports between the Sevastopol ITT and Simferopol SIZO exceeded the minimum level of severity (see Khudoyorov  v. Russia, of November 8, 2005) … and that there has been a violation of Article 3 of the Convention.”

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