Odesa yachtsmen, convicted in Georgia, have been dismissed
19.07.2021 - 11:50
Odesa yachtsmen Yuri Khomich and Vladimir Dyachenko were dismissed. Prior to that, the seafarers has spent 8 months in a jail, after which they were sentenced to 4 years in prison.
According to the Ukrainian Information Service, this decision of the Georgian authorities is associated with the negotiations of the President of Ukraine Volodymyr Zelensky.
Ukrainian politicians believe that the accusations of the seafarers were of a political nature due to the fact that the third seafarer who was on the boat with the Ukrainians is Mikhail Baturin, the ex-employee of the State Security Service.
Now they are preparing a boat on which the residents of Odesa will return home. When this will happen is still unknown.
Earlier, the Batumi City Court ruled in the case against two Ukrainians who are accused of illegally crossing the Georgian state border. The men were sentenced to 4 years in prison.
As a recap: in December last year, a boat with Ukrainians Yuri Khomich and Vladimir Dyachenko, as well as Georgian citizen Mikhail Baturin, were detained off the coast of Georgia. They tried to cross the Black Sea in a private boat. Georgian coastguard has detained men in the neutral waters of the Black Sea.
Two months after the arrest of the Ukrainians, their lawyer Beki Basilai said: “The coastguard has detained the seafarers in violation of human rights. My clients made a peaceful voyage in the territorial waters of Georgia. This is permitted by Georgian law. The charge states that they allegedly crossed the Georgian border illegally, although they did not. You can illegally cross the border, perhaps, with a fake passport or bypassing the checkpoint. They did nothing, they were detained not even in the port, but in the open sea. Neither I nor the attorney will be able to find out what the Ukrainians have actually violated.”
The Ministry of Foreign Affairs expressed its position and appealed to the Georgian authorities to quickly and impartially consider this case, as well as change the pre-trial restrictions and dismiss the Ukrainian yachtsmen.
