A Ukrainian court has issued the first conviction for war crimes committed in Crimea during the Euromaidan–the protests that ended with the overthrow of Viktor Yanukovych in 2014, that of two former Ukrainian Intelligence Service (SBU) agents for kidnapping and torture The defendants were sentenced ‘in absentia’ on Wednesday to nine and ten years in prison for the 2015 kidnapping and torture of Oleksander Kostenko.
The Prosecutor’s Office claims that the defendants began collaborating with the Kremlin authorities once Crimea came under Moscow’s administration and were transferred to the peninsula’s new security services.
In early 2015, the defendants abducted and then imprisoned Oleksander Kostenko, who was subjected to electric torture, physical violence and threats» in order to obtain from the victim a confession of guilt for a crime he «did not commit», that of assaulting a riot police officer.
Kostenko was sentenced by a Crimean «occupation court» to three and a half years of confinement in a penitentiary facility in the Russian city of Kirovo-Chepetskpor until he was released in August 2018, when he moved to Kiev, Ukrainian media detail.
Source: (EUROPA PRESS)
