Donetsk court sentences two British fighters and a Moroccan to death

Two British citizens Y a moroccan have been sentenced to death by a court in the separatist region of Donetsk after they were captured in Mariupol while fighting in the ranks of the Ukrainian army, Russian news agencies have reported. The three foreign fighters have been accused of “terrorism” and of act as “mercenaries”. The trial has been defined by Western observers as a “farce” with which the Kremlin is trying to emulate the war crimes trials that kyiv has been celebrating for weeks against some of its soldiers.

The British Aiden Ashlin28 years old, and Shaun Pinner, 48, were captured in April during the fierce battle of Mariupol, the southeastern Ukrainian port that the Kremlin managed to seize after reducing much of the city to rubble through relentless and indiscriminate shelling. the moroccan Brahim Saadoun, meanwhile, was arrested a month earlier in a small town between Mariupol and Donetsk. The court found that all of them were guilty of committing “mercenary activities and commit actions that sought to seize power and subvert the constitutional order of the Donetsk People’s Republic”, as reported by the Interfax agency.

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A day before the sentence was known, the British Foreign Office accused the pro-Russian authorities in Donetsk of trampling on the rights of the combatants, whom it defined as “prisoners of war” protected by the Geneva Conventions. Some believe that Russia’s intention with these draconian sentences would be to eventually use them as a bargaining chip to exchange foreign fighters for convicted Russian soldiers in Ukrainian courts, where the occupying forces’ war crimes are being tried.

“The Russian authorities have chosen to give a exemplary lesson these two British citizens in a completely shameful exercise,” said British MP Robert Jenrick in an interview with BBC Radio 4, before stressing that he hopes that both can soon enter into a prisoner exchange agreement.