The Supreme Court of Crimea on December 26 refused to release from the pretrial prison captains of two naval vessels of the Ukrainian navy that were captured in the Black Sea on November 25, an Interfax correspondent has reported.
The court of appeals has upheld the ruling of the Kyivsky district court in Simferopol, specifying that the term of arrest will come to an end on January 24, 2019 instead of January 25, 2019 as had been declared by the court of the first instance that merely made a technical mistake.
In particular, the court refused to cancel the arrest and release the Yany Kapu towboat’s captain Oleh Melnychuk and the Nikopol gunship’s captain Bohdan Nebylytsia.
“We will contact the European Court of Human Rights,” Nebylytsia’s lawyer Emil Kurbedinov told Interfax.
The naval seamen are kept in the Lefortovo pretrial prison in Moscow. They attended the court hearings via a video conference call. The arrested Ukrainian naval seamen consider themselves to be prisoners of war.
As was earlier reported, on November 25, the Russian border guards attacked and captured three Ukrainian naval vessels en route from Odesa to Mariupol near the Kerch Strait. The crews were then arrested and transported to Moscow. They are charged with illegal border crossing.
