MOSCOW: Paul Urey, a British man captured by pro-Russian forces in Ukraine, has died in detention, Moscow-backed separatists said on Friday.
“He died on July 10,” Darya Morozova, a representative of the self-proclaimed Donetsk People’s Republic, said on messaging app Telegram, adding that he had diabetes.
Non-governmental organizations describe Urey as a humanitarian who worked as an aid volunteer in Ukraine.
Moscow-backed separatists insist Urey was a “professional” soldier and took part in conflicts in Afghanistan, Iraq, Libya and Ukraine.
Morozova, the breakaway region’s ombudsperson, said that the Briton took part in fighting in Ukraine and also recruited and trained mercenaries before his capture in April.
Urey, born in 1977, was a Type 1 diabetic and needed regular insulin doses, according to his mother Linda Urey, who had earlier said his family was “extremely worried.”
Morozova said he suffered from a number of chronic diseases and was also “in a depressed psychological state.”
“Despite the severity of the alleged crime, Paul Urey was given appropriate medical assistance,” she said.
“However, taking into account his diagnoses and stress, he died on July 10.”
Morozova also accused the International Committee of the Red Cross of refusing to provide Urey with necessary medicine.
According to humanitarian organization Presidium Network, Urey was a well-traveled humanitarian who worked for eight years in Afghanistan.
Pro-Russian separatists have captured a number of foreign citizens they describe as mercenaries.
Among them are Brits Aiden Aslin and Shaun Pinner who in June were sentenced to death by separatist authorities in the stronghold of Donetsk.
Britain has expressed fury over the death sentences handed to the two Britons in the case.
Briton captured by separatists in Donetsk dies in detention: official
https://arab.news/wjhqm
Briton captured by separatists in Donetsk dies in detention: official
- Paul Urey, in his 40s, was a Type 1 diabetic and needed regular insulin doses
French court slashes jails term for trio over 2020 teacher beheading
- Brahim Chnina, the Moroccan father of a girl who falsely claimed that Paty had asked Muslim students to leave his classroom before showing the caricatures, had his 13-year sentence reduced to 10 years
PARIS, France: A French court on Monday reduced on appeal the jail sentences of three men convicted over the 2020 terrorist beheading of a teacher who showed a class cartoons of the Prophet Muhammad.
Samuel Paty, 47, was murdered in October 2020 by an 18-year-old radical Islamist of Chechen origin in an act that horrified France.
His attacker, Abdoullakh Anzorov, was killed in a shootout with police.
Two friends of Anzorov, French national Naim Boudaoud and Azim Epsirkhanov, a Russian of Chechen origin, had their sentences of 16 years in prison reduced to six and seven years respectively by a Paris court of appeal.
Both were accused of having driven Anzorov and helping him to procure weapons before the beheading.
Brahim Chnina, the Moroccan father of a girl who falsely claimed that Paty had asked Muslim students to leave his classroom before showing the caricatures, had his 13-year sentence reduced to 10 years.
His daughter, then aged 13, was not actually in the classroom at the time and during the first trial apologized to the teacher’s family.
The court however left the 15-year term for French-Moroccan Islamist activist Abdelhakim Sefrioui untouched.
The quartet were among the seven men and one woman found guilty in 2024 of contributing to the climate of hatred that led to the beheading of the history and geography teacher in Conflans-Sainte-Honorine, west of Paris.
Paty, who has become a free-speech icon, used the cartoons as part of an ethics class to discuss freedom of expression laws in France.
