ECHR restores high-priority status of Sentsov case-Kyiv Post

The European Court of Human Rights (ECHR) in Strasbourg has restored the high-priority status of a complaint filed by two Ukrainians convicted in Russia, the head of the Agora International Human Rights Group, Pavel Chikov, told Interfax on Jan. 29. “The earlier decision to postpone the case of Oleh Sentsov and Oleksandr Kolchenko until the consideration of the interstate Ukraine v. Russia complaint has been canceled. Priority order of consideration has been returned to the case,” Chikov said. The ECHR will announce progress in the case, he said. In August 2015, the North Caucasus District Military Court sentenced Sentsov, who was detained in Crimea in 2014, to 20 years in a high-security penitentiary on counts of forming a terrorist group. Sentsov went on hunger strike on May 14, 2018, and demanded that all Ukrainians incarcerated in Russia be released. Last June, Sentsov’s defense lawyers notified the ECHR of his hunger strike and asked for his case to be considered immediately and for provisional measures to prevent force-feeding, which, under the convention on human rights, constitutes torture. The ECHR requested information from the authorities, who replied that Sentsov was getting medical treatment, and urged him to stop the hunger strike. He refused, saying that his high-priority complaint had been awaiting consideration for several years. On Oct. 5, Valery Maksimenko, the deputy director of the Federal Penitentiary Service, told Interfax that Sentsov had ended his hunger strike. He agreed in writing to receive food. The hunger strike ended without achieving its goal on October 6 under the threat of force-feeding, Sentsov said in a statement released by his lawyer Dmitry Dinze. KYIV POST