GENEVA, August 15. /TASS/. Permanent Representative of the Russian Federation to the UN Office and Other International Organizations in Geneva Gennady Gatilov regrets that the UN human rights structures got involved in the campaign that demands that Russia release Oleg Sentsov, who is serving a prison term on terrorism charges.
The statement of three UN special rapporteurs - David Kaye, Dainius Puras and Michel Forst - was released earlier on Wednesday, in which they called on Russia’s authorities "to unconditionally release him [Sentsov] as a matter of urgency."
There are grounds to assume that the activity of UN special procedures is part of a staged information campaign aimed at building up pressure over Russia, Gatilov said. "We are receiving almost identical demands from various sources. It’s a pity that the UN law enforcement structures got involved in this campaign," the Russian diplomat said.
Obvious incorrectness
According to the comment made by the Russian permanent mission to the UN Branch and other international organizations in Geneva on Wednesday, the UN special rapporteurs’ statement is "apparently incorrect and contradictory." The permanent mission noted that the experts groundlessly stated that Sentsov, being a Russian citizen under the current legislation, "was forcibly stripped of Ukrainian citizenship."
In their opinion, the information that Sentsov’s life was endangered is untrue. The permanent mission believes that the urgent appeal to the Russian authorities "to unconditionally release him as a matter of urgency" "may be qualified as an attempt to exert pressure over the justice of a sovereign state in order to achieve the review of a sentence made in full conformity with the law as a result of just and unbiased judicial examination."
"The situation is paradoxical. It turns out that many special rapporteurs of the UN Human Rights Council, who are expected to care about the strict observance of the basic norms of international law regarding human rights, are making public appeals to a state to directly violate the principle of equality of all before the law and court in favor of their demands," the permanent mission said in the statement. "The actions of the UN members bring ‘double standards’ and selectivity to mind."
Sentsov’s case
In 2015 Ukrainian filmmaker Oleg Sentsov, best known for his 2011 film Gamer, was found guilty of terrorism. On August 25, 2015, the North Caucasus district military court in Rostov sentenced him to 20 years behind bars on charges of setting up a terrorist cell in Crimea. In the spring of 2014, the group’s members carried out two terror attacks in Simferopol: they set the offices of Crimea’s Russian Community public organization and a regional office of the United Russia party on fire. They were also preparing other terrorist acts, according to the case materials.
On May 14, Sentsov declared a hunger strike and has been under medical supervision since then. On August 9, the press service of the Federal Penal Service’s Directorate for the Yamalo-Nenets Region reported that the last medical examination did not reveal any deterioration of his health.