MOSCOW. Oct 13 – The Ukrainian film director Oleh Sentsov, convicted in Russia, will be serving his sentence at a high-security prison in the Yamalo-Nenets Autonomous District, his lawyer Dmitry Dinze told Interfax on Oct.13.
“Oleg is at a colony in Labytnangi. His sister told me this,” Dinze said, adding that he had no other information.
According to open source data, high-security correctional facility number eight (also dubbed Polar Bear) is located just outside the Yamalo-Nenets town of Labytnangi. Its inmates are male convicts sentenced for serious and very serious crimes.
The North Caucasus Military Court in Rostov-on-Don ruled in Aug. 2015 to sentence Sentsov, who had been detained in Crimea in 2014, to 20 years in a high-security penitentiary on charges of setting up a terrorist group in Crimea.
The Ukrainian authorities have repeatedly called the Sentsov case politically motivated. In May 2016, he filled out documents for a transfer to Ukraine to serve his term there. The Russian Supreme Court declined to review his appeal. The Ukrainian Justice Ministry said in fall 2016 that Russia had refused to extradite the Ukrainian.
