MOSCOW: Russell Bentley, a US nationwide who went lacking in Russian-controlled jap Ukraine early this yr, is believed to have been tortured to demise by Russian troopers who at the moment are set to go on trial, Russia’s prime investigative physique stated on Friday (Sep 20).
Bentley died within the Russian-controlled metropolis of Donetsk in April, Margarita Simonyan, head of Russia’s state media outlet RT, wrote on the time, saying he had been “combating there for our guys” and dealing with Russia’s Sputnik information service.
Bentley, born in 1960, was a self-declared supporter of Russian-backed forces in Ukraine. The Russian state information company RIA reported that he had joined pro-Russian fighters in jap Ukraine in 2014, later working with Sputnik and acquiring Russian citizenship.
The Investigative Committee stated in a press release that it had accomplished its probe and accused three Russian servicemen of torturing Bentley to demise in Donetsk on Apr 8.
It stated two of the troopers had then put his physique in a automotive and blown it up. A fourth soldier had been ordered the next day to maneuver Bentley’s stays to a different location in an try to hide the crime.
The Committee’s assertion stated the accused troopers, whom it named, have been familiarising themselves with the allegations earlier than the indictment was despatched for approval.
It stated they might variously be tried on prices starting from exceeding their authority, utilizing bodily violence and torture, and inflicting demise by negligence, to tried concealment of a severe crime. It didn’t say whether or not or not they’d denied the accusations.
Russian media retailers have prompt that the troopers could have mistaken Bentley – the topic of a 2022 interview with Rolling Stone journal titled The Weird Story of How a Hardcore Texas Leftist Turned a Frontline Putin propagandist – for a US spy.