Prosecutor demands 23 years in prison for Sentsov

The guilt of the film director Oleg Sentsov and the ecologist Alexander Kolchenko from Ukraine in the case on arsons in the Crimea has been completely proved, said the prosecutor during the debates at the North-Caucasian District Military Court. He asked to sentence Sentsov to 23, and Kolchenko to 12 years in a high security colony.

The "Caucasian Knot" has reported that Sentsov and Kolchenko were accused of committing terror acts, which were regarded as such by investigators, namely, of burning down the offices of the public organization "Russian Community of Crimea" and the "Edinaya Rossiya" (United Russia) party in Simferopol on April 14 and 18, 2014. Both defendants stated that confessions were knocked out of them after detention. The case is heard at the North-Caucasian District Military Court in Rostov-on-Don since July 21.

The public prosecutor has also treated as proven the intention of Alexei Chirnij to blow up the monument to Lenin. According to the prosecutor, there is no doubt that Chirnij acted as a member of a grouping. He expressed a similar view regarding the involvement of Gennady Afanasiev in Sentsov's grouping.

"It has been established that Sentsov had created a terrorist grouping, the members of which had committed two arsons and were preparing other terror acts," said Tkachenko.

Full text of the article is available on the Russian page of 24/7 Internet agency ‘Caucasian Knot’.