Sentsov; Kotov

5-10-17   The four men were linked only by their shared opposition to the Crimea invasion. 

Sentsov, who had played an active role in Euromaidan, coordinated efforts by Maidan car owners to take food, water and medical supplies to the Ukrainian soldiers in Crimea besieged by Russian forces.  When the Ukrainian soldiers were given just a couple of hours to leave Crimea, it was Sentsov who organized their evacuation....

FSB (Russian Security Service) officers turned up on May 10, 2014.  The search produced nothing, but Sentsov was taken away and has not seen his family since then.  Russia continues to claim that he was arrested on May 11, to conceal the first hours when he was subjected to savage torture.

He and the other three men were all held incommunicado and without access to lawyers, first in Simferopol, then in Moscow.  It is likely that secrecy was to ensure that the most obvious signs of torture had faded.

On May 30, the FSB issued a public statement claiming that the four men were members of a Right Sector ‘sabotage and terrorist group’.  In the style of the Stalinist show trials, no consideration was given to plausibility or even accuracy.  The men were alleged to have been planning terrorist attacks in Simferopol; Yalta and Sevastopol, with the aim being, for example, to destroy non-existent railway bridges. Other than those grandiose claims, there were the above-mentioned Molotov cocktail incidents which had been thrown in the night into offices occupied only during the day.

Virtually everything about this case is reminiscent of the worst repressive Soviet methods, and it is no accident that the trial of Sentsov and Kolchenko was called ‘absolutely Stalinist’. 

The FSB statement was accompanied by videos of ‘confessions’ by Afanasyev and Chirniy.  The two men were tried separately and received the minimum 7-year sentences. 

Sentsov and Kolchenko continued to reject all the charges and Sentsov gave details of the torture applied to force him to ‘confess’.  He was openly warned that if he didn’t give the testimony demanded, he would get 20 years and rot in a Russian prison.  http://khpg.org/index.php?id=1494021982  (he was swapped lately)
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-Konstantin Kotov and his lawyer, Maria Eismont, wait for the verdict in his case at Moscow's Tverskoi district court, September 5, 2019. © 2019 Tanya Lokshina/Human Rights Watch

  I stood in a Moscow court as it sentenced Konstantin Kotov, a 34-year old software engineer, to four years in prison.  His crime?  Kotov dared to take part in several peaceful but unsanctioned protests this spring and summer.

Since 2014, Russian law mandates criminal sanctions for participating in more than two unauthorized public gatherings within six months.  Kotov protested in Moscow against the exclusion of viable opposition candidates from the city legislative assembly race. Also in recent months, Kotov protested against the war in Ukraine and stood up for people who were prosecuted on politically motivated charges, including Crimean Tatars, whom Russian authorities prosecuted on bogus terrorism charges. The authorities subjected Kotov to administrative sanctions four times for his peaceful protest activity.

Before the verdict, Kotov said: “I think it’s not me who is on trial but rather the rights to freedom of speech and freedom of assembly. In Russia, there are no independent political parties, no fair elections, so only one option remains – to go to the streets and shout your demands.  But even that is forbidden.”  

-rally for Kotov/political prisoners at Tverskoi district court

     https://www.hrw.org/news/2019/09/05/russian-court-sentences-activist-four-years-prison