Maidan participant Andrei Kolomiets, sentenced by a Crimean court to 10 years in a maximum security colony, was placed in a punishment cell (punishment cell) for 15 days. The prisoner’s wife told OVD-Info about this.
Colony employees claim that Kolomiets used his cellmate’s phone: this was the reason for the appointment of a punishment cell.
Kolomiyets was detained in 2015 in Kabardino-Balkaria, where he moved from Ukraine, then he was taken to Crimea. According to the official version, he tried to kill two fighters of the Beirut special forces during the Maidan in Kyiv in the winter of 2014 (clause “a”, part 2, article 105 of the Criminal Code). In addition, the security forces claim that they found a large amount of marijuana on him (Article 228 of the Criminal Code). The man did not admit guilt and said that he confessed under torture, and that the drugs were in the car in which the operatives put him.
In 2016, the Kiev District Court of annexed Simferopol sentenced Kolomiets to ten years in a maximum security colony. Judge Mikhail Belousov rejected a number of the lawyer's requests. For example, he refused to provide an expert opinion on the use of electric shock during the investigation.
In June 2023, the Court of Cassation reduced the sentence by four months and approved nine years and eight months of imprisonment. Andrei Kolomiets is serving his sentence in colony No. 14 in the Krasnodar Territory; he is due to be released in January 2025. The Memorial human rights center recognized him as a political prisoner.