Life imprisonment and 25-year penal colony terms: Russia sentences four Melitopol residents in bombings case. Defendants reported torture. PHOTO
A military court in Rostov-on-Don has sentenced four residents of occupied Melitopol in a case concerning assassination attempts against representatives of the Russian occupation administration and police. Ihor Haranin received a life sentence, while Serhii Harkusha, Serhii Yevtushenko, and Olena Roi were each sentenced to 25 years in a penal colony. All four said Russian security forces had tortured them and forced them to give false testimony.
Censor.NET reports this, citing the Mediazona news outlet.
The military court in Rostov-on-Don today sentenced four Ukrainians. Ihor Haranin received a life sentence, while Serhii Harkusha, Serhii Yevtushenko and Olena Roi were each sentenced to 25 years in a penal colony. Depending on their alleged roles, they faced charges under several articles, including committing a terrorist attack and participating in a terrorist group.
The investigation’s version
The FSB claims that, acting on instructions from Ukrainian intelligence services, they organised two assassination attempts against collaborators in occupied Melitopol and were preparing a third.
The first explosion occurred near the home of occupation administration official Dmytro Trukhin. A photograph published by TASS shows shattered windows on the ground floor of the building. Trukhin was in serious condition but survived, a colleague reported.
The second explosion killed deputy head of the police department Oleksandr Mishchenko. He had remained in his post after the city was captured. Another police officer, Yurii Akimov, was hospitalised and survived.
FSB investigators claim the Melitopol residents were preparing to kill senior police officer Roman Pshenychnyi in a bombing. However, he declined victim status in the case.
Torture and fabrication
All four defendants maintain that they gave testimony under torture.
- Serhii Harkusha said he signed the first interrogation record without reading it after "four or five days" of beatings in a basement. The people who abducted him wore camouflage and balaclavas. He did not know who they were or where he was.
- Ihor Haranin was held in a "garage", the term Melitopol residents use for secret Russian prisons. He was forced to identify fellow defendant Yevtushenko "by his earlobes", although he had previously seen him only wearing a hat.
- Olena Roi, a doctor, said an investigator had "invented" her admission that she knew Yevtushenko. Yevtushenko himself recalled that the same investigator had urged him not to retract testimony extracted under torture, saying he would be included in a prisoner exchange anyway and "nothing in his life would change".
- In the spring, Serhii Yevtushenko's inguinal hernia protruded while he was in the courthouse. Medical staff pushed it back into place, and the Ukrainian was immediately taken back to the hearing, where the hernia protruded again. He has repeatedly become unwell in court. Yevtushenko accuses staff at the pretrial detention centre of failing to provide medical care.
