From left, the UK’s Andrew Hill, Dylan Healy and John Harding are seen behind bars
(Picture: AP)Three more Brits captured in Ukraine could face the death penalty in an unrecognised court run by Kremlin-backed separatists.
John Harding, Andrew Hill and Dylan Healy went on trial charged with being mercenaries and “undergoing training to seize power by force,” on Monday in the city of Donetsk, Russian media reported.
Andrew Hill has been pictured with his arm in a sling while being guarded bya soldier in a balaclava at the “kangaroo court”, alongside Swede Matthias Gustafsson and Croat Vjekoslav Prebeg.
All five pleaded not guilty to the charges that could impose the death penalty under the laws of the self-proclaimed and unrecognized Donetsk People’s Republic.
Prosecutors allege all five men were members of the neo-Nazi Azov battalion and other military units captured in Mariupol.
Russian news agency Tass also said ex-serviceman Mr Harding, 60, from Sunderland, had been fighting alongside Ukrainian forces since 2018.
In July he appeared in a video appealing to Prime Minister Boris Johnson for help. It is alleged he had also fought in Syria for the Kurdish side but had denied killing anyone.
Aid worker Mr Healy, from Cambridgeshire, was captured at a military checkpoint alongside Paul Urey who died in July while also being held by Russian-backed separatists.
Dominik Byrne from the Presidium Netwok where Mr Healy volunteered told the BBC: “Dylan’s family are very concerned and worried.
“It’s shocking to see them in what is a kangaroo court, which really that has no standing in international law at all.
“They’re being treated totally against the Geneva Conventions and in a very hostile way, being transported without knowing where they are, so that’s totally unacceptable.”
The next court hearing in their case is scheduled for October, the Interfax news agency reported.
It came after fellow Brit Aiden Aslin who was captured while fighting for Ukraine submitted an appeal to the same court after his death penalty sentence, according to Russian media.
Mr Aslin, originally from Newark in Nottinghamshire, was sentenced to death last month by a proxy court in the Russian-backed seperatist Donetsk region of Ukraine in what Foreign Secretary Liz Truss condemned as a “sham judgment”.
Ukrainian social media has been abuzz with speculation that the Kremlin may seek to use the foreign fighters to extract concessions from Ukraine or swap them for Russian prisoners.
