Court in Krasnodar refuses to release Ukrainian Hryb

Court in Krasnodar refuses to release Ukrainian Hryb

Krasnodar Regional Court in Russia has rejected an appeal filed by the lawyers of Ukrainian citizen Pavlo Hryb and has not released him on house arrest, the Censor.NET online news site has reported.

"The defense team asked for Hryb's release from a detention center on house arrest. Judge Lyubov Perfilova rejected [the appeal]," the report says.

Hryb was not brought to the courtroom.

Ukrainian Foreign Ministry spokesperson Mariana Betsa reacted to such a court decision.

"There is no law in the Russian Federation... Human life costs nothing. We demand that Russia release illegally detained Ukrainian Hryb," she wrote on Twitter on Tuesday.

Ex-Ukrainian State Border Guard Service official Ihor Hryb said on August 28 that Russian special services had abducted his 19-year-old son Pavlo during a visit to Gomel, Belarus, where he went on August 24 to meet a girl whom he had met and talked to only on social-networking sites. It was agreed that Pavlo would return the same day. After he failed to return the next day, Ihor Hryb travelled to Gomel to look for him.

He said that in Belarus he had learned that Pavlo was on a Russian list of wanted persons in connection with a terrorist attack, and that a search had been initiated by the Russian Federal Security Service's Directorate for the Krasnodar region in Sochi.

It was reported on September 7 that Hryb was in a detention facility in Krasnodar, Russia.

On September 15, Pavlo Hryb's sister Olha Hryb said her brother was transferred from jail to hospital. According to her, neither Ukrainian consuls, nor Ukrainian doctors were allowed to see the detainee.

Ukrainian doctors arrived in Russia on October 12 to examine Hryb, who is being held in a pretrial detention center in Krasnodar and does not receive the necessary medical care, but the Russian side didn't allow them to examine the Ukrainian.

On October 18, the Oktyabrsky District Court of Krasnodar (Russia) extended detention term for Ukrainian Pavlo Hryb until January 4, 2018.