Oleg Sentsov and Alexander Kolchenko were transported from the Rostov pre-trial detention center

Oleg Sentsov and Alexander Kolchenko, convicted in the case of “Crimean terrorists”, were transferred from the Rostov pre-trial detention center, Sentsov’s sister Natalya Kochneva told Mediazona.

According to her information, the Ukrainian director is being sent to the Irkutsk region, and the anti-fascist Alexander Kolchenko to the Chelyabinsk region. Kaplan said that both convicts began to be transferred on February 4, but she only learned about this today.

Kolchenko’s lawyer Svetlana Sidorkina clarified to Mediazona that her client is currently in transit in Voronezh, and Sentsov is in Samara.

At the end of November, the Supreme Court rejected the lawyers' appeal against the verdict against the Ukrainians. In August 2015, the North Caucasus District Military Court sentenced Sentsov to 20 years in a maximum security colony, and Kolchenko to 10 years in prison.

Sentsov was found guilty of creating a terrorist community, committing two terrorist attacks, preparing for two terrorist attacks and illegal trafficking in weapons and explosives. Kolchenko was accused only of participation in a terrorist community and complicity in a terrorist attack.

The prosecutor insisted that Ukrainian director Oleg Sentsov created a “terrorist society” in Crimea in April 2014, which received instructions from unknown persons in Kiev. According to the indictment, the goal of the community was to “destabilize the situation in Crimea” and “influence the authorities” in order to force the Russian authorities to refuse to annex the peninsula. The prosecution called the arson of the office door of the “Russian Community of Crimea” and the window of the local branch of “United Russia” as terrorist attacks.