PRO-RUSSIAN SEPARATISTS UPHOLD DEATH SENTENCES FOR FOREIGNERS

Sun 12 June 2022:

On Sunday, a pro-Russian separatist leader in eastern Ukraine said Sunday he would not alter the death sentences handed to two Britons and a Moroccan for fighting with the Ukrainian army.

“They came to Ukraine to kill civilians for money. That’s why I don’t see any conditions for any mitigation or modification of the sentence,” Denis Pushilin, the leader of the separatist Donetsk region, which tried them, told reporters.

Pushilin said the court had “issued a perfectly fair punishment” to the three fighters.

He also accused Boris Johnson, the British Prime Minister, of ignoring their plight and neglecting to engage separatist authorities.

Pushilin said at a press conference in Mariupol, the breakaway region’s capital, as part of a Russian defense ministry mission to the battle-scarred Ukrainian city that was overrun by Russian and separatist forces in May.

Johnson’s spokesman said on Saturday that the death sentences given to Britons Aiden Aslin and Shaun Pinner, as well as Moroccan Brahim Saadun, were “appalled.”

“It is clear they were Ukrainian armed forces members and are therefore prisoners of war,” and not mercenaries as the separatist authorities in Donetsk accuse them of being, the spokesman said.

According to Aslin and Pinner’s families, the two men have been in the country since 2018.

The United Nations raised alarm on Friday about the death sentences given to inmates by pro-Russian rebels.

SOURCE: INDEPENDENT PRESS AND NEWS AGENCIES

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