A court in Russia has left Ukrainian citizen Pavlo Hryb in custody until May 4, his father, Ihor Hryb, has said.
“On March 20, the next court of appeal meeting was held, and again detention. Already seven months behind bars. Constant psychological pressure from FSB investigators,” he wrote on his Facebook page.
According to him, his son is not allowed to write letters or have meetings in the detention center, and Ukraine’s consulate general in Rostov-on-Don received another official refusal from the investigator regarding permission for a meeting between Hryb and his mother.
Ihor Hryb also posted a photo of his son, noting that he was exhausted.
“Pavlo smiles when he saw his mother and the Ukrainian consul, who managed to take this photo, while they were not expelled from the courtroom,” he said.
Ukrainian Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Mariana Betsa, in turn, wrote on Twitter: “On March 20, the court left political prisoner Hryb in custody until May 4. Despite the laws, the mother was not allowed to visit her son. We demand Hryb’s release.”
As reported, ex-Ukrainian State Border Guard Service official Ihor Hryb said on August 28, 2017, that Russian special services had abducted his 19-year-old son Pavlo during a visit to Gomel, Belarus, where he went on August 24 to meet a girl whom he had met and talked to only on social-networking sites. It was agreed that Pavlo would return the same day. After he failed to return the next day, Ihor Hryb traveled to Gomel to look for him.
He said that in Belarus he had learned that Pavlo was on a Russian list of wanted persons in connection with a terrorist attack and that a search had been initiated by the Russian Federal Security Service’s Directorate for the Krasnodar region in Sochi.
It was reported on September 7, 2017, that Hryb was in a detention facility in Krasnodar, Russia. On March 2, the Oktyabrsky District Court of Krasnodar decided to extend Hryb’s arrest until May 4, 2018.
