DPR refuses public executions of foreign mercenaries

This statement was made by the head of the republic Denis Pushilin. He added that the current legislation of the DPR does not provide for the public execution of prisoners.

“The enforcement and the absence of any information at the request of relatives is all provided for by the legislation of the Donetsk People's Republic regarding capital punishment,” Kommersant quoted Pushilin as saying.

Now the DPR is preparing to carry out the sentences against three foreign mercenaries. In July of this year, a court in the DPR sentenced to death two British citizens (28-year-old Aiden Aslin and 48-year-old Sean Pinner), as well as one citizen of Morocco (21-year-old Saadoun Brahim). After they were taken prisoner on the territory of Donbass, they were accused of mercenarism and put on trial.

Three days after the foreigners were sentenced to death, the DPR authorities lifted the moratorium on the death penalty.

Now the condemned are to be shot.

According to Pushilin, the place for the execution is already ready.

Representatives of foreign states sent protests to Russian President Vladimir Putin in connection with the imposition of death sentences in the Russian-controlled DPR.

A number of citizens of the Russian Federation also asked Putin to influence the authorities of the DPR in order to abolish the death penalty in the republic. In particular, such appeals were received from academicians of the Russian Academy of Sciences, members of the Human Rights Council, and Tatyana Moskalkova , Commissioner for Human Rights in the Russian Federation.

Activists alarmed by reports of a possible imminent execution of death sentences handed down in the DPR, and in their letter they appealed to such names as Leo Tolstoy and Empress Elizabeth, who were principled opponents of the death penalty.

“We are proud that there is no death penalty in Russia. Mercy is the strength of our people. We ask you for mercy. We consider it necessary to abolish the death penalty in the Donetsk People's Republic. We ask you to propose to the head of the Donetsk People's Republic to extend the moratorium on the use of the death penalty to the Donetsk People's Republic," human rights activists wrote in a letter to the President of the Russian Federation.

However, humanists have not yet succeeded in achieving the abolition of the death penalty in the DPR.