12:46 15.08.2018

Sentsov not to ask for pardon - human rights organization Agora

2 min read
Sentsov not to ask for pardon - human rights organization Agora

Ukrainian filmmaker Oleh Sentsov, who is serving his time at a penitentiary in Russia's Yamal-Nenets autonomous district and has been on a hunger strike for over 90 days, will not ask for pardon, Pavel Chikov, the head of the international human rights organization Agora, whose lawyers are defending Sentsov in Russian and international courts, said on Wednesday.

"Oleh will not write any appeals, it's very obvious," Chikov said on his Telegram channel.

Kremlin press secretary Dmitry Peskov had said earlier that there were no grounds to criticize the Russian authorities for declining a plea to pardon Sentsov. "You know that there are effective laws, and you know that using the phrase 'denied pardon' is perhaps incorrect in legal terms, as there has been no pardon request," Peskov said.

Sentsov's lawyer Dmitry Dinze had said earlier that the filmmaker would not ask for pardon. "Oleh is against pardon. He won't write anything to the president," Dinze told Interfax on June 22.

Sentsov's cousin Natalya Kaplan also said Oleh would not ask for pardon. "Oleh would definitely not write a pardon plea," the Ukrainian publication Hromadske quoted Kaplan as saying on August 14.

The North Caucasus District Military Court in Rostov-on-Don ruled in August 2015 to sentence Sentsov, who was detained in Crimea in 2014, to 20 years in a high-security penitentiary for plotting a terrorist attack there.

Sentsov declared a hunger strike on May 14, 2018 to demand that all Ukrainians held in Russia "on political motives" be freed.

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