A Russian army court docket on Wednesday sentenced 12 participants of Ukraine’s Azov Battalion to jail phrases starting from 13 to 23 years on terrorism fees within the biggest and highest-profile trial of Ukrainian prisoners of conflict for the reason that full-scale invasion.
The entire defendants had been taken as prisoners of conflict, arrested all through filtration procedures or voluntarily surrendered to Russian occupying forces within the town of Mariupol, which used to be virtually completely razed to the bottom all through an 80-day Russian siege on the outset of its invasion.
The folks come with army staff in addition to beef up team of workers like chefs and handymen, the unbiased information website online Mediazona reported.
The Southern District Army Court docket in Rostov-on-Don discovered them responsible of seizing energy, organizing or taking part in a 15 may organization in addition to present process coaching for terrorist actions.
The sentenced folks had been some of the 24 present and previous Azov participants, together with 9 ladies, who had been arrested in southern Russia on terrorism fees in March-Might 2022. Russia’s Memorial human rights group has designated they all as political prisoners.
The 9 ladies on trial had been mentioned to were chefs or cleaners. Two males had been attempted in absentia after being integrated in a prisoner alternate in 2022.
Probably the most detainees, Oleksandr Ishchenko, died in Russian custody in 2024.
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Right through the trial, defendants described critical mistreatment in custody, together with being crushed to the purpose of damaged bones, interrogated with baggage over their heads and compelled to sing the Russian nationwide anthem.
Additionally they alleged that they got meals infected with waste or chemical compounds, feminine detainees had been denied hygiene merchandise and a lifeless prisoner’s frame used to be left in an overcrowded cellular for days, Mediazona reported.
In spite of more than one requests to exclude confessions received underneath duress from the trial’s proof, the court docket denied their appeals.
Russia designated the Azov battalion as a “terrorist” group in August 2022, months after the folks had been arrested.
The battalion shaped in 2014 as a far-right volunteer paramilitary unit combating towards pro-Russian separatists in japanese Ukraine however used to be later reformed and built-in into Ukraine’s nationwide guard. Moscow has used Azov’s previous extremist right-wing hyperlinks to justify what it calls its “denazification” of Ukraine.
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