A British captured in Ukraine and released in a prisoner exchange told Sunday that his captors stabbed him and forced him to sing the russian national anthem.
Aiden Aslin, who was released and flown to Riyadh last Wednesday along with four others British told The Sun, in his first interview back to the United Kingdomwho was tortured.
Aslin, 28, originally from Nottinghamshire in central England, lived in Ukraine and it served for the marines when Russia invaded the country in February.
He was taken prisoner while fighting for Kiev and sentenced to death in June by Russian-backed separatists in Donetsk, eastern Ukraineaccused of being a mercenary.
Aslin told The Sun that he was repeatedly hit with a baton during his interrogation and at one point fell to the ground after being hit on the forehead.
An officer knelt down next to him and said in Russian: “I am your death“he counted.
“He told me ‘did you see what I did?’, pointing to my back. He showed me a knife and then I realized that he had stabbed me,” he said.
His captor then asked if he wanted a quick death or a beautiful death, Aslin said. He replied that a “quick death” and the man replied: “No, you are going to have a beautiful death.”
He said he spent the next five months in a tiny cell, infested with cockroaches and lice, with no daylight except when he was taken out to make propaganda videos or communicate with the British Foreign Office.
He said he listened to the Russian national anthem on a loop and was ordered to stand up and sing, shouting “glory to Russia“.
The young man thanked “wholeheartedly” the Russian oligarch Roman Abramovitch — subject to sanctions of United Kingdom and the European Union — for the role he played in his release.
Aslin was released along with four others British in the framework of an exchange of 10 prisoners of war, through the mediation of Saudi Arabia.
AFP