Kino -Union came in defense of Sentsov

The Interregional Public Organization "Kinogos Union" appealed to the GDAV of the Human Rights Council Mikhail Fedotov with an open letter in defense of the Ukrainian director Oleg Sentsov accused of terrorism. The document is published on the website of the organization.

"The obvious discrepancy between the actions that Sentsov is accused, their consequences and the unprecedented severity of the sentence (23 years of a maximum regime), on which Oleg Sentsov, is accused, is amazing at the obvious inconsistency of their consequences and to use all the possibilities available in your disposal to guarantee his rights to objective and legal investigation and the court. The fact of the messages of Sentsov and Afanasyev about the torture applied to them and cases of “knocking out” the indications necessary for the investigation, ”the letter signed by the head of the film union Andrei Proshkin said.

The document was signed by Vitaly Mansky, Alexei Popogrebsky, Andrei Plakhov, Daniil Dondure and many others.

Kino -Union is an organization formed in 2010 as an alternative to the Union of Cinematographers of Russia, headed by Nikita Mikhalkov. The cinema union was formed because of disagreement with the policy of Mikhalkov and the rules of the existing union.

On Wednesday, the European Film Academy (EFA)demanded that the Russian authorities stop the politically motivated process and immediately free Sentsov. “Watching the process and especially taking into account the fact that the key witness of the accusation refused to testify, since they were“ given under pressure and coercion, ”we are shocked by the fact that Oleg Sentsov’s accusations of“ terrorist crimes are still in force, ”the document says.

The authors also demand “initiating a complete, operational and impartial investigation of both the director’s obviously arbitrary detention by the FSB officers and the statements of Oleg Sentsov about the use of torture in order to transfer the justice responsible for this.”

On Wednesday in the North Caucasus District Military Court in Rostov-on-Don, the prosecutor Oleg Tkachenko demanded for director Oleg Sentsov 23 years in a strict regime colony and two years of restriction of freedom after serving the sentence. For the left activist Alexander Kolchenko, the prosecutor demanded 12 years in prison and a year and a half of restrictions.

The “faces” publish the last words of the defendants .