Ukrainian prisoner of war Alexander Ishchenko, who served as a driver in the Azov regiment, died in pre-trial detention center-5 in Rostov-on-Don. As a Mediazona correspondent reports, this was announced during a meeting of the Southern District Military Court in Rostov-on-Don, which was considering the case of Ishchenko and 23 other “Azovites.”
The pre-trial detention center must provide the documents confirming the death of the defendant to the court haven't had time yet. The exact date and cause of death are also unknown.
At today's hearing, the court finished examining the evidence in the case, but did not proceed to debate in order to wait for documents from the detention center about Ishchenko's death. The debate is due to take place on August 7.
Alexander Ishchenko in the Southern District Military Court on November 22, 2023 years. Photo: Alexandra Astakhova/Mediazona
Oleksandr Ishchenko was 55 years old and married. On February 25, 2022, he joined the territorial defense of the Azov special forces regiment as a military driver. In the spring of 2022, he was captured by the Russians in Mariupol and later became a defendant in a criminal case along with 23 other Ukrainians.
All of them served in Azov at different times under contract or were civilian employees. Some took part in the defense of Mariupol and Azovstal, while others had already left the service at the time of the Russian invasion and were detained at home or during «filtration.» Two of them, David Kasatkin and Dmitry Labinsky, have already been exchanged for Russian prisoners of war and are being tried in absentia.
Nine women are involved in the case, most of them cooks who prepared food for the soldiers of the Azov Regiment.
The criminal case was initially opened on the territory of the self-proclaimed DPR and the accused were kept in a pre-trial detention center in Donetsk. In September 2022, the case was transferred to the court, which, after several months of hearings, redirected it to the Southern District Military Court of Rostov-on-Don.
Initially, the defendants in the case were charged with articles of the Criminal Code of the DPR, and in June 2023 the charge was reformulated to articles of the Criminal Code of the Russian Federation: actions aimed at the violent seizure authorities (Article 278 of the Criminal Code), participation in the activities of a terrorist organization (Article 205.5 of the Criminal Code), and training for the purpose of carrying out terrorist activities (Article 205.3 of the Criminal Code).
Alexander Ishchenko was charged under two articles — participation in the activities of a terrorist organization and an attempt to violently seize power.
Memorial recognized the defendants in this case as political prisoners. «We consider the Supreme Court's decision to recognize the Azov Regiment as a terrorist organization to be unlawful, and therefore the charges under «terrorist» articles based on involvement in this unit are also unlawful. Moreover, it was adopted only on August 2, 2022, after the defendants in the case were detained,» the human rights project said in its publication.