Attorney Dmytro Yagunov Successfully Defended the Rights of a Prison Officer Who Had Been the Victim of an Attack by Informal Prisoner Hierarchies Before the ECtHR

On 30 April 2026, the European Court of Human Rights delivered its judgment in Sklyarenko v. Ukraine (Application No. 18277/18) and found a violation of the procedural limb of Article 3 of the Convention — the prohibition of torture. The applicant’s interests before the Court were represented by advocate Dmytro Yagunov.

WHAT HAPPENED

On 1 January 2017, Anatoliy Sklyarenko, a junior inspector at Kyiv Pre-Trial Detention Centre No. 13, was attacked by a detainee while on duty. The detainee, who had just turned 18, climbed out of his cell through the cell window and struck the officer on the head with a metal rod. The victim sustained an open traumatic brain injury and spent nearly a month in hospital, undergoing surgical intervention.

SUBCULTURAL DIMENSION: THE ATTACK AS AN “INITIATION TEST”

In the parallel domestic proceedings, advocate Dmytro Yagunov advanced an argument that goes well beyond personal animosity: the attack bore the character of a ritual act aimed at elevating the detainee’s status within the informal prisoner hierarchy. Under the established norms of the criminal subculture in post-Soviet penitentiary institutions, an assault on a member of the administration is one of the most “recognised” means of acquiring authority in the criminal milieu. Particularly significant from an evidentiary standpoint is the fact that those involved in the attack were juveniles — a category of detainees most prone to demonstrative violence as a means of obtaining status recognition.

This argument is supported not only by theoretical standards but also by the direct observations of the CPT itself. In particular, CPT Standard CPT/Inf (2025) 12 on “Informal Prisoner Hierarchy” — the first dedicated document of the Council of Europe’s Committee for the Prevention of Torture on informal prisoner hierarchies — is directly relevant.

A particularly telling example is documented in the report on the visit to Moldova in June 2018: “The problem of inter-prisoner violence was especially acute among juvenile or young persons held in remand prisons. Many of them felt the need to assert themselves while still in the juvenile establishment — in order to gain the appropriate ‘rank’ in the informal prisoner hierarchy by the time they were transferred to adult establishments. The delegation recorded instances of beatings and other forms of physical violence in the relevant section of Chișinău Prison” (Report on the visit to Moldova carried out by the CPT from 5 to 11 June 2018, Para. 20, P. 9).

WHAT THE ECHR FOUND

The Court found that the investigation, which lasted more than eight years, had effectively stalled after September 2018. No meaningful investigative steps were taken to establish the circumstances of the case or to bring those responsible to account. Despite the existence of the detainee’s confession, witness testimony, and forensic examination results, no person was ever served with a notice of suspicion. The Court held that responsibility for the delays rested primarily with the state authorities rather than the applicant.

SYSTEMIC CONTEXT

The Sklyarenko case illustrates a systemic problem: the 2016 reform transferring investigative competence over crimes in penitentiary institutions to “departmental” investigators of the Ministry of Justice created an investigative vacuum in practice. Until this provision was struck down by the Constitutional Court in 2018, the case was trapped in a jurisdictional deadlock. During that period, an atmosphere of impunity became self-reproducing.

The Sklyarenko case is not only about the ineffective investigation of a specific attack. It is about the vulnerability of penitentiary staff to prison subculture and informal prisoner hierarchies; about the secondary victimisation of the injured officer by the state itself; and about the price of irresponsible reforms — paid not by abstract institutions, but with the health and fate of a real human being.