Five men, including three from Britain, denied in a court set up by Russia that they were hired guns fighting with Ukrainian forces against Russia. In the so-called Donetsk People’s Republic, John Harding, Dylan Healy, and Andrew Hill all went to court.
Russian media say that Mr. Harding, along with Swede Mathias Gustafsson and Croat Vjekoslav Prebeg, could be given the death penalty. The court is not known around the world.
It recently gave death sentences to two British men and a Moroccan man. The punishments have not yet been done. On Monday, five men went to court in a breakaway part of Ukraine. They were handcuffed and had black bags over their heads.
Russia’s Tass news agency says that all three men who could be sentenced to death were taken in or near Mariupol, the Ukrainian port city that Russian forces took over after months of attacks.
They are accused of trying to “seize power by force” and of acting as mercenaries in armed conflicts. Russian media say that the judge said all five men’s cases will continue to be heard at the beginning of October.
Family and friends of the Britons say they were not mercenaries and want them to be treated like prisoners of war, as the Geneva Conventions say they should be.
People who don’t fight, like aid workers, and people who can’t fight anymore, like prisoners of war, are protected by international treaties against “acts of violence or intimidation.”
Mr. Harding, a former serviceman from Sunderland, had been fighting with Ukrainian forces since he moved there in 2018. In July, he asked Prime Minister Boris Johnson for help in a video message. Mr. Hill has fought with the International Legion of the Ukraine.
According to the charity Presidium Network, Mr. Healy, from Huntingdon, Cambridgeshire, was working as a volunteer aid worker in Ukraine when he was taken in April at a checkpoint. He was taken along with Paul Urey, who died in July while being held by Russian-backed separatists.
Dominik Byrne, who worked for the charity, said that the men should be treated with respect. He said, “Dylan’s family is very worried and worried about him.”
“It’s shocking to see them in what is really just a make-believe court that has no place in international law.