Ukrainian Pilot Savchenko Slapped With New Charges
Source: Moscow Times
Detained Ukrainian pilot Nadezhda Savchenko, who was seized by pro-Moscow separatists in Ukraine last summer and sent to Russia, now stands accused of illegally crossing the border, her lawyers said.
The Russian Federal Security Service (FSB) informed Savchenko of the new charges against her on Thursday, lawyer Nikolay Polozov said via Twitter. Polozov added in a separate Twitter message that Russia and its proxies "have not only abducted Savchenko from Ukrainian territories, but are now also framing her for supposedly illegally crossing the border."
The charge against Savchenko came a day after Russia announced it was resuming its boycott of the European human rights body PACE, which the Russian delegation said was in protest against at the suspension of its voting rights there. Russia also said it was withdrawing its invitation for monitors from the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe (PACE) to visit Savchenko in jail.
Lawyers said the timing of the new charge against Savchenko — whose release PACE has been demanding — was a further attempt to disregard the assembly. "This is a retaliation for [what happened yesterday]," another lawyer, Mark Feygin, said via Twitter. "They really have opened a new case against Savchenko for illegally crossing the border. They brought her over themselves, and then they charged her themselves."
Read more: http://www.themoscowtimes.com/news/article/ukrainian-pilot-held-in-russia-accused-of-illegally-crossing-border-lawyers-say/515155.html
Orwell and Kafka would be amazed. They originally tried to pretend she was a defector!
Savchenko's legal status underwent a bizarre evolution, from being an asylum seeker, to being questioned as a witness in a criminal case against Ukrainian officials, to "accidental detention" at a Russian hotel as a suspect. She was finally charged with directing mortar fire that resulted in the deaths of two Russian journalists, Igor Kornelyuk and Anton Voloshin, who were reporting on the fighting from inside Ukraine.
http://www.democraticunderground.com/1017240125
What they can't call her is a POW because then they would have to admit they are at war with Ukraine.
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