The Ministry of Foreign Affairs of Ukraine is expressing its protest against the extension for six more months of the arrest of the Ukrainian citizen Pavlo Hryb by a Russian military court, the Foreign Ministry’s spokeswoman Mariana Betsa said.
“The farce in Hryb’s case goes on. Today his arrest in Russia was illegally extended until April 2019. We herewith express our protest to Russia and demand his release,” Betsa wrote in a tweet on Twitter on November 7.
Earlier that day, the North Caucasian district military court in Rostov-on-Don extended the period of the arrest of the Ukrainian citizen Pavlo Hryb who is accused of terrorism facilitation for six more months, until April 24, 2019.
The case is scheduled to be heard on the merits on November 15 at 11.00 a.m. Moscow time.
As was earlier reported, on August 28, 2017, Ihor Hryb, a former officer of the Border Guards Service of Ukraine, said that his 19-year-old son Pavlo had been kidnapped by Russia’s special agents while he was visiting Belarus.
On September 7, it became known that Pavlo Hryb was being held in a pretrial detention center in Krasnodar, Russia.
Later, the Ukrainian foreign ministry said that they received a confirmation that Hryb who had gone missing in Belarus was being detained in Krasnodar, Russia.
The Hryb’s case was transferred for hearing to the North Caucasian district military court, so he was sent by prisoner transport from Krasnodar to Rostov-on-Don. The court hearings started last July, the prisoner at the bar did not plead guilty.
