The military division of the Russian Supreme Court has upheld the verdict against Ukrainian filmmaker Oleg Sentsov and his associate Alexander Kolchenko, who were sentenced to prison terms of 20 and 10 years respectively, the TASS news agency reported Tuesday.
Lawyers for Sentsov and Kolchenko had appealed the original sentence, calling the accusations "groundless" and "politically motivated," but the application was rejected by the court. The verdict comes into force Tuesday, according to Russian law.
"The result was predictable, and the lawyers intended to defend the innocence of the convicts," Sentsov's lawyer Dmitry Dinze said, adding that the defense will now appeal the sentence again, TASS reported.
Oleg Sentsov, 39, was arrested in May 2014 while protesting against Russia's annexation of his native Crimea. He was accused of masterminding multiple terrorist attacks against pro-Russian organizations on the peninsula.
Sentsov refused to have the last word in court. "I have nothing to say — it's a boring television show," he was quoted as saying by Crimean news service Krym.Realii.
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