Libyan court verdict on two Russians will be appealed in days - Russian diplomat
MOSCOW,. June 5 (Interfax) - The defense lawyers for the Russian citizens sentenced to jail terms in Libya, will appeal the verdicts in days, said Ilya Samunin, the consular service chief of the Russian Embassy in Tripoli.
"We are preparing an appeal. The detained Russian citizens will empower these lawyers to do all the required work in connection with the appeals to be filed with Libya's Supreme Military Court in the coming couple of days, Samunin told Interfax on Tuesday.
Asked what the timeframe is for handling the appeal, he said, "The old laws are in force now and they require that the appeal be handled within 60 days."
"But in the current political setting, it is difficult to say exactly when this will happen - maybe within 60 days, maybe the process will last longer," he added.
The Russian citizens' defense lawyers are working for free, the Russian diplomat said.
A court in Libya on June 4 found Russian citizens Alexander Shadrov and Vladimir Dolgov, who were arrested in August 2011, guilty of assisting the Muammar Gaddafi regime. Shadrov was sentenced to life in a jail and Dolgov to ten years in a correctional labor facility.
The Libyan rebellious battalion Al Qaqaa detained citizens of Belarus, Ukraine and Russia on August 27, 2011. All of them were accused of repairing military hardware the Muammar Gaddafi regime used "to annihilate the Libyan people."
The group was freed with the Russian Embassy's mediation on September 3, but on September 6 they were arrested again to probe their possible involvement in the repair and modernization of weapons in service with the former Libyan leader's armed forces.