American teacher Stephen Hubbard was horrifically beaten, sexually assaulted while imprisoned in Russia: former inmate
The US teacher released from a Russian prison this week was singled out behind bars because he’s American — facing heinous physical and sexual abuse, including being forced to crawl around like a dog, according to a report.“They treated us worse than animals,” Ihor Shishko, a former Ukrainian prisoner jailed alongside Stephen Hubbard, a 74-year-old retired teacher from Michigan, said of the hellish conditions they endured inside the Russian lockup.Hubbard was freed on Wednesday following negotiations between the US and Moscow after being jailed for more than four years on charges of fighting as a mercenary in Ukraine.US envoy Steve Witkoff, who was visting St.
Petersburg at the time, praised Russian President Vladimir Putin as a “humanitarian,” after Hubbard’s release.“You talk so much about my president, President Trump, being a humanitarian.
You are a humanitarian also, sir,” Witkoff told the Russian leader.However, Hubbard was horrifically beaten, electrically shocked, and sexually assaulted while behind bars, according to Ihor Shishko, a former Ukrainian prisoner who was jailed alongside the teacher in the Bryansk region of western Russia, the Times reported.The former prisoner, who now runs a veteran’s rehabilitation center in northeast Ukraine, blasted Witkoff’s flattery of Putin as a “humanitarian” as “shameful and despicable.”Shishko claimed Hubbard was forced to crawl around prison like a dog, faced electric shock torture, and sexual abuse involving genital touching games in exchange for food, Shishko told the outlet.He added that he bandaged Hubbard’s knees after his skin rubbed away from being forced to crawl on the floor while he served a seven-year sentence in the frigid, highly cramped prison. “How you can refer to that as humanitarianism in any sense is just totally baffling, like it’s some sort of political game.If Steve Witkoff didn’t know what was done to Stephen and us, he should have known,’ Shishko sai...