DONETSK, August 1. /TASS/. The Supreme Court of the Donetsk People’s Republic (DPR) will review a criminal case against a Swede, a Croat and three UK citizens who were members of the Azov nationalist battalion and other armed formations and were captured in Mariupol, including at the Azovstal steel plant, the court’s press service told TASS on Monday.
The press service specified that the date of a hearing on the matter and the format of hearings have not yet been determined.
"The board of appeal of the DPR Supreme Court received a criminal case against Mathias Gustafsson, Vjekoslav Prebeg, John Harding, Dylan Healy, Andrew Hill who are foreign citizens accused of mercenarism," a court’s representative said.
On June 9, a court in the DPR handed capital punishment verdicts to two British nationals, Shaun Pinner and Aiden Aslin, as well as Moroccan Brahim Saadoun, who were captured in Donbass, for participating in combat actions in Ukraine as mercenaries. The DPR’s Prosecutor General’s Office earlier said that testimony obtained from Pinner, Aslin and Saadoun proved their involvement in crimes such as forcible seizure of power and mercenary activities. Similar charges were brought against Healy and Hill who had been captured at the Ilyich plant in Mariupol and in the Nikolaev Region. The Britons refused to cooperate with investigators and testify, while the Swedish citizen who was captured at the Azovstal plant rejected the accusations of fighting for the Ukrainian army as a mercenary in the DPR.
According to a source, 60-year-old John Harding fought in Syria on the Kurdish side. Harding insisted that he had not killed anyone.