No mercy for death row British fighters Aiden Aslin and Shaun Pinner, says rebel leader
No mercy should be shown to the two British fighters sentenced to death this week during a show trial in a Ukrainian rebel region, the region’s leader has said.
The comments by Denis Pushilin, the head of the unrecognised Donetsk People’s Republic, dent hopes that a prisoner swap between Ukraine and Russia will free Aiden Aslin and Shaun Pinner.
“First of all, I must be guided by the court decision that has been made,” Mr Pushilin said, according to Russian media. “By the nature of those articles, those offences that they committed, I see no grounds or prerequisites for me to pardon them.
“They came to Ukraine to kill civilians for money. That’s why I don’t see any conditions for any mitigation or modification of the sentence.”
He added the court had “issued a perfectly fair punishment” to the three fighters.
Mr Aslin and Mr Pinner were contract soldiers fighting for Ukraine’s 36th Marine Brigade when they were captured in April during the siege of the steelworks in Mariupol.
Russia and the Kremlin-backed rebel regions in the Donbas have consistently described the two men as mercenaries, rather than prisoners of war, a label that allowed a show trial in Donetsk on Thursday to order them to be shot by a firing squad.
A Moroccan man Brahim Saadoun was also sentenced to death. The UK Government on Sunday came under pressure to win the release of Saadoun, who along with Aslin and Pinner was said to have surrendered in April after fighting with Ukrainian forces in the besieged port city of Mariupol.
Brandon Lewis, the Northern Ireland Secretary, told Sky News that the Government was “fully engaged” with Ukrainian authorities in trying to help Aslin and Pinner after their “sham trial”.
The Britons were legal combatants serving with Ukraine’s armed forces and fully entitled to protection for prisoners of war under the Geneva convention, Lewis said.
The UK should also intervene on Saadoun’s behalf, his friend Zina Kotenko told Sky from her new home in northern England, after fleeing Russia’s invasion.
