Sentsov, Kolchenko, Savchenko to remain in Russian prison

The North Caucasus district military court in Rostov-on-Don, Russia, has prolonged the custodial term for Ukrainian director Oleg Sentsov and activist Oleksandr Kolchenko for another half a year.

This is reported by the Mediazona news outlet referring to lawyer of Sentsov, Olga Chavdar.

“The custodial term for the defendants was prolonged at the preliminary hearing. According to the court’s ruling, they will remain in custody for another six months, i.e. until January 2016,” the lawyer said.

The judge also rejected the motion of Kolchenko’s lawyer Svitlana Sydorkina to return the case to the prosecutor’s office.

The next hearings will be open. However, the lawyers of the suspects will not be able to disclose the data from the case, which are considered to be a state secret.

The next court hearing will be held on July 21.

As reported, Ukrainian director Oleg Sentsov openly opposed the occupation of Crimea by the Russian Federation and rendered humanitarian assistance to the Ukrainian military in Crimea in February-May 2014. The Russian investigation charges Oleg Sentsov with setting up the terrorist community in Crimea, which was a structural subdivision of the Right Sector. According to the investigators, the suspects created the community to encourage peninsula’s secession from the Russian Federation. Oleg Sentsov and Oleksandr Kolchenko vehemently deny the charges.

Meanwhile, the Ukraine’s Foreign Ministry voices the protest to new “baseless charges, trumped up by the Russian authorities” against imprisoned MP of Ukraine Nadiya Savchenko.

As the press service informs, the Ministry is concerned about Russia’s complete disregard of its commitments under the paragraph 6 of the Package Measures for the Implementation the Minsk agreements.

“July 6, 2015, the Investigative Committee of the Russian Federation reported on completion of the criminal proceedings against Nadiya Savchenko. The previous false charges of complicity in murder of two Russian citizens, illegal border crossing and others were upgraded by one even more absurd charge of murder of those Russians. In addition, the investigation several times completely ignored the evidence of Savchenko’s innocence, provided by the lawyers,” reads the Ministry’s statement.

The diplomats flag the blatant bias of the Russian side, as the investigation bodies rejected all the motions, filed by Savchenko’s lawyers, to conduct further expert examinations of the findings of the Russian experts, provided in the case.

The Foreign Ministry of Ukraine also notes that Russia continues ignoring Savchenko’s European parliamentary immunity of the PACE member.

As a reminder, July 8, the OSCE Parliamentary Assembly’s General Committee on Democracy, Human Rights and Humanitarian Issues adopted the Resolution “On Abducted and Illegally Detained Ukrainian Citizens in the Russian Federation.” The resolution demands to release the abducted Ukrainian citizens, including Nadiya Savchenko, director Oleg Sentsov and others. However, the member of Russian Parliament Nikolai Kovaliov said that Russia would consider the OSCE PA’s decision to be “legally void”.