Amsterdam on Met Arseniy case: An unspeakable level of cruelty and torture

Metropolitan Arseniy in the hospital. Photo: Sviatohirsk Lavra

In an interview with journalist Tucker Carlson, international lawyer Robert Amsterdam, who documents violations of believers’ rights in Ukraine, described in detail the case of Metropolitan Arseniy of Sviatohirsk. According to the lawyer, the situation in which the hierarch has found himself reflects an indescribable level of cruelty and torture.

Amsterdam said that one of his lawyers had visited Metropolitan Arseniy in a prison located in an active combat zone. The hierarch has been held in custody for 17 months despite his grave health condition. “He has no stomach. He is horribly ill. He is a monk, a bishop who has devoted his life to the Church,” the lawyer noted.

Amsterdam explained that after a long period of detention, there had been expectations that Metropolitan Arseniy would be released at least on medical grounds. However, after a brief release from the pre-trial detention center, the hierarch was once again seized by Ukrainian security services.

“They get him out for a moment – and then the secret police arrest him, and he is incarcerated again. It is a level of cruelty and torture that I cannot even express to you,” said the international attorney.

The lawyer highlighted that the new charge brought against the bishop allegedly concerns “resistance to the Russian invasion,” but, as Amsterdam stated, it is entirely trumped up and bogus.

Robert Amsterdam also stressed that the case of Metropolitan Arseniy fits into a broader pattern of persecution against the Ukrainian Orthodox Church – a situation, he said, that the general public in the West is completely unfamiliar with.

As previously reported by the UOJ, Amsterdam noted that although Western media have begun to shift their attitudes toward President Zelensky, the issue of repression against believers, the seizure of churches, and the actions of Ukrainian security forces against the UOC remain entirely suppressed.

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