ROSTOV-ON-DON, RUSSIA – Starting from mid-November, the North Caucasian district military court in Rostov-on-Don will resume hearings into the case of Ukrainian citizen Pavlo Hryb who is accused of terrorism facilitation, the court’s press secretary Alena Katkalo told Interfax-South.
“The court hearings are scheduled for Nov. 6 to start at 10 AM Moscow time,” Katkalo said.
She said that the hearings will be held behind closed doors.
According to Pavlo Hryb, he was detained in the town of Gomel in Belarus on August 24, 2017. On August 28, 2017, Ihor Hryb, a former officer of the Borders 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 Sept. 7, 2017, it became known that Pavlo Hryb was being held in a pretrial detention center in Krasnodar, Russia.
In Russia, Hryb is accused of committing a crime that is described in Part 1 of Article 205.1 (facilitation of terrorist activities.)
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.
Last August the court decided to return the criminal case back to the prosecutor of the Krasnodar Krai because the officers involved in the pretrial investigation made a mistake: the Ukrainian was accused of the crime that was stipulated in the revision of the law that was not in effect at the time the alleged crime had been committed.
The investigators believe that over the period from March to May 2017, while being in Ukraine, the accused man had exchanged messages over the Internet with a high-school student from Sochi. According to the investigators, Hryb tried to persuade the girl to plant a self-made explosive device and set it off at a prom on the night of June 30, 2017.
