LONDON (Reuters) -Five UK prisoners of war who were released by Russia as part of an exchange with Ukraine have arrived in Britain, non-profit organisation Presidium Network was reported as saying by the BBC on Thursday.
The five are Aiden Aslin, Shaun Pinner, John Harding, Dylan Healy and Andrew Hill.
Presidium Network, which says it carries out evacuations of families and individuals from war zones and which has been supporting the family of Healy, said: “We know that all are back safety in the UK”, according to the BBC.
Aslin and Pinner were captured by the Russian-backed forces in Ukraine’s coastal city of Mariupol in April and were sentenced to death by a court in the self-proclaimed Donetsk People’s Republic, one of Russia’s proxies in eastern Ukraine.
They, along with Moroccan Brahim Saadoun, were found guilty of “mercenary activities and committing actions aimed at seizing power and overthrowing the constitutional order of the DPR” — a sentence condemned by Kyiv and Britain.
Healy, a Briton providing humanitarian assistance in Ukraine, was detained in April alongside Paul Urey, who later died in detention. Harding and Hill had been fighting alongside Ukrainian forces and all three had denied being mercenaries in the Russian proxy court.
(Reporting by Elizabeth Piper, Editing by Paul Sandle)
