Right now, I'm about to try to get out of Ukraine, and seek political asylum in Hungary.
— Gonzalo Lira (@GonzaloLira1968) July 31, 2023
Either I'll cross the border and make it to safety, or I'll be disappeared by the Kiev regime.
This is what's happened to me over the past three months.
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Chilean-American blogger Gonzalo Lira, who was detained by Ukrainian intelligence in May due to allegations of having pro-Russian sympathies, resurfaced on the internet on Monday and recounted a distressing tale of physical assaults and blackmail while awaiting a show trial.
“I was tortured in two of the four cells I was in—by the other prisoners,” Lira posted in a 25-tweet thread on Monday evening.
“I got a cracked rib in my first cell, but it wasn’t too bad. The worst stretch was in my fourth cell. From 1 pm on June 21 until 7 pm the next day — 30 hours” two inmates tortured him and at one point “used a toothpick to scratch the whites of my left eye, while asking me if I could still read if I had just one,” Lira wrote.