He had pleaded not guilty to the charges and said he did not recognise the validity of the court.
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Another defendant in the case, Alexander Kolchenko, received ten years in prison. The Russian government denies that Sentsov and Kolchenko are political prisoners.
“Let’s not assume they are all political prisoners”, Galeotti said.
As the sentence was read, Sentsov defiantly flicked a victory sign and he and Kolchenko sang the Ukrainian national anthem inside their glass enclosure.
“Hang in there, Oleh”.
Ukraine’s President Petro Poroshenko, in a message on his Facebook page, urged the defendants to remain defiant, adding: “There will come a time when those who organised this so-called trial will themselves sit on the bench of the accused”. US State Department spokesman John Kirby said the pair were “targeted by authorities because of their opposition” to Russia’s land grab. Karpyuk is an activist and Ukrainian officials say his arrest took place under unclear circumstances.
“This is clear miscarriage of justice”. Her lawyers said the court is ignoring phone records proving she was already in custody when the journalists were killed.
“Russian courts are not competent to judge acts committed outside the internationally-recognised territory of Russia”, EU foreign policy chief Federica Mogherini said in a statement, referring to alleged crimes committed in Russian-annexed Crimea.
Amnesty’s Eurasia researcher, Heather McGill, said the military court process was “redolent of Stalinist-era show trials of dissidents”.
Russia’s FSB, the successor to the Soviet KGB, arrested the men in May 2014 at a pro-Ukraine rally in Crimea.
He had supported the Kiev protests in Independence Square that brought down former president Viktor Yanukovych’s regime, and he later opposed Russia’s annexation of Crimea in March.
The conflict has killed almost 7,000 people, according to the United Nations.
Sentsov was arrested in May of 2014 and later charged with masterminding arson attacks with the Ukrainian ultra-nationalist group Right Sector, andplotting to blow up a statue of Lenin.
He also claimed he was tortured and pressured into confessing.
Estonian authorities say Russian security agents abducted Eston Kohver last September on the Estonian side of the border in revenge for an investigation linking them to a smuggling ring. “Witnessed have been coerced, evidence tampered with and the entire case for the prosecution built on a house of cards”.
One key prosecution witness, Gennady Afanasyev, refused to face by his unique testimony incriminating the 2 males, saying it had been extracted beneath duress.
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The sentences for Sentsov and Kolchenko were slightly less than those requested by prosecutors who asked for 23 and 12 years respectively.As a result of recent legislation, terrorism charges in Russian Federation are now tried exclusively in military courts. “This trial was fatally flawed and credible allegations of torture and other ill-treatment have been ignored by the court”.
