Sentsov to visit European Parliament on Nov 25 - journalist

Former political prisoner Oleg Sentsov will visit the European Parliament in late November, Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty correspondent Rikard Jozwiak has said on Twitter.

"It has now been decided that Sentsov will come to the European Parliament to address the Foreign Affairs Council on Monday, November 25. I guess he will receive the Sakharov Prize during the EP plenary later that week," the journalist wrote.

Film director Oleg Sentsov and activist Oleksandr Kolchenko were detained by Russian security services in Crimea in May 2014 on charges of organizing terrorist attacks on the occupied peninsula. In August 2015, the North Caucasus District Military Court in Rostov-on-Don sentenced Sentsov to 20 years in a maximum-security penal colony and Kolchenko to 10 years in prison. Both pleaded not guilty.

In detention, Sentsov declared a hunger strike demanding the release of all Ukrainian political prisoners in Russia. The hunger strike lasted for 145 days and was stopped because of the threat of force-feeding.

On October 25, 2018, the European Parliament named Sentsov a Sakharov Prize winner.

On September 7, 2019, Ukraine and Russia exchanged detainees in the "35 for 35" format. Eleven Ukrainian political prisoners, including Sentsov and Kolchenko, as well as 24 seamen captured by Russia in the Kerch Strait in November 2018, returned home.

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