A jury trial in the city of Grozny in Russia`s Chechen Republic has found politically persecuted Ukrainian citizens Mykola Karpiuk and Stanislav Klykh guilty, according to lawyer Mark Feygin.
”As expected, Karpiuk and Klykh were found guilty in a jury trial in Grozny,”
Feygin told an UNIAN correspondent.
He stressed that ”the politically persecuted persons can be saved in today`s Russia only if one soberly and truthfully anticipates a guilty verdict, building the defense line on that.”
”Mykola Karpiuk and Stanislav Klykh. The jury has found the Ukrainians guilty of taking part in combat operations against [Russian] federal forces during the Chechen war in the winter of 1994-1995 as part of a unit dubbed Viking, killing and inflicting injuries to several dozen Russian soldiers. Karpiuk and Klykh have been found guilty. However, according to the jury, Klykh deserves leniency,” Radio Svoboda`s correspondent Anton Naumlyuk wrote on Facebook from the courtroom.
He noted that Karpiuk was emotionlessly holding on the bars of the cage in the courtroom, he was listening carefully to the announcement of his verdict. Klykh was reading a newspaper, paying no attention to what was happening around him.
The verdict had to be announced the day before late in the evening, but the court meeting was urgently postponed until Thursday. The lawyers claim pressure was exerted on the jury.
As UNIAN reported earlier, in late August, the Investigation Committee of the Russian Federation said that the criminal case against two citizens of Ukraine Karpiuk and Klykh on charges of involvement in the fighting against Russian troops in Chechnya on the side of local militants in the 1990s would be sent to court.
Karpiuk was abducted by the Russian security services in Ukraine`s Chernihiv region in March 2014. Klykh was arrested in the Russian city of Orel in August 2014.
