The Ukrainian was sentenced not for espionage and sabotage that he had been initially accused of by the FSB.
Mr Aleksye Stogniy, citizen of Ukraine, was sentenced by ‘Kieyvsky District Court of Simferopol City’ controlled by the Kremlin to three years and six months on July 17 2017. The session was held in camera.
According to the information the Crimean Human Rights Group has, the Sevastopoler was sentenced under Article 222.1 of RF CC (Illegal Acquisition, Transfer, Sale, Storage, Transportation, or Bearing of Firearms, Its Basic Parts, Ammunition, Explosives, and Explosive Devices) and Article 223.1 of RF CC (Illegal Manufacture, Revamping and Repairs of Fire Weapons and Ammunitions).
The criminal articles the person of so called ‘Ukrainian saboteurs’ case, Aleksey Stogniy was sentenced under, have nothing in common with espionage and sabotage that the FSB had accused the Ukrainian of initially. At the same time the Russian State TV channel RUSSIA 1 showed a video on November 1, 2016, with Stogniy’s confession of espionage for Ukraine during the staged interrogation.
According to the information the Russian mass media received from the FSB, Mr Aleksey Stogniy, a resident of Sevastopol, called in the piece ‘colonel of the Main Intelligence Department of Ukraine’, was detained in daytime in Sevastopol when he was walking to the secret service meeting. ‘He appeared to understand that he was followed, that he was, as said, under a microscope. In any case he was with a gun. Therefore the special police unit detained him rather harshly,’ an off-camera spokesperson said.
Then in the piece Mr. Stogniy ‘was connected’ with another ‘Saboteurs’ Case’ person, Sevastopoler Dmitriy Shtyblikov.
‘I received money many times. I went to Kiev, and I was given the funds by Mr Dmitriy Shtyblikov, too, when he came from Kiev. The funds were handed in my shop in Sevastopol City’, Aleksey Stogniy said for camera.
The Crimean Human Rights Experts consider that Mr Stogniy could have made these confessions under the pressure . The video was taken with violations of both international and Russian laws, since we may see only the detained, but not the defence lawyer and the inquiry officer who is putting the questions.
According to the information of Aleksey’s spouse, Mrs Oksana Stogniy, her husband was detained not in daytime, but at night of November 15, 2016, at the Russian ‘border crossing point’ that is against Kalanchak Check Point on departure from Crimea, when he was going to Kyiv for his daughter’s birthday. The next day the house and the shop of Sevastopoler was illegally searched under the pretext of ‘checking the premises on the presence of illegal subjects’, though nothing was found, but the desktops and laptops were confiscated. The reason of Aleksey’s detention was not explained to the Stogniy’s family.
On November 17, Mr Viktor Mozheliansky, a judge of Kieyvsky District Court, during the in camera session, gave a ruling on sentencing Mr Aleksey Stogniy for a 2-month’s detention in custody. Oksana managed to see the husband in the court corridor, handlocked and in neck face mask.
The human rights experts have found numerous procedure violations in the so called ‘Ukrainian saboteurs’ case.
In fact the ‘Ukrainian commandos’ case includes several criminal cases, with different articles the Ukrainians are accused under in each case.
Totally, according to the CHRG data, in 2016 9 people were detained: Evgeniy Panov, Andrey Zakhtey, Redvan Suleymanov, Vladimir Prisich, Dmitriy Shtyblikov, Aleksey Bessarabov, Vladimir Dudka, Gleb Shabliy, and Aleksey Stogniy.
The Russian mass media, even at the investigation stage, called all the detained Ukrainian saboteurs preparing acts of terror in the peninsula. Later the CHRG reported that Mr Redvan Suleymanov was accused under Article 207.2 of the RF CC ‘Knowingly Making a False Communication About an Act of Terrorism’, and Ukrainian Vladimir Prisich who was called a Ukrainian spy by the Russian mass media in August 2016, was sentenced on May 18 2017 to 3 years for storage of drugs.
The Crimean Human Rights Group stated that all persons of ‘Ukrainian saboteurs case’ had been deprived from freedom for political motifs with violation of fundamental rights and freedoms and were political prisoners. These citizens of Ukraine, according to the CHRG experts’ opinion, may be considered civil hostages that have a right to be defended within the international humanitarian law.
According to the opinion of Ms. Olga Skrypnyk, head of the Crimean Human Rights Group, the cases of these Kremlin hostages have been falsified and used, inter alia, for political purposes and for aggressive anti-Ukrainian propaganda.
‘Thus, the Russian propaganda disseminates among the people the opinion that Ukrainian saboteurs are active as organized group in Crimea. In fact, these are rudely cooked up criminal cases that are investigated with torturing and other serious violations of human rights’, Ms Olga Skrypnyk said.
