Moscow-backed separatists in eastern Ukraine began a trial on Monday against three Britons, a Croat and a Swede accused of fighting on the side of the Ukrainian army, which could result in the death penalty, AFP reports.

The “Supreme Court” in the separatist region of Donetsk opened the trial of John Harding, Andrew Hill, Dylan Healy from Great Britain, as well as the Croat Vjekoslav Prebeg and the Swede Matias Gustafsson, Ria Novosti reports.

Harding, Prebeg and Gustafsson, who were captured in the area of ​​the Ukrainian port of Mariupol, which has been besieged and bombed by the Russian military for weeks, face the death penalty, according to the judge, quoted by the TASS news agency.

As the RIA-Novosti agency reports, three men facing execution are accused of attempting to “seize power by force” and “participating in an armed conflict as a mercenary.”

Briton Andrew Hill is accused only of being a mercenary, and Dylan Healy is accused of “participating in the recruitment of mercenaries” for Ukraine, the Ria-Novosti agency reports.

The court said the trial of the five defendants would not resume until early October, without giving any explanation. All of them pleaded not guilty, Russian media reported.

In early June, separatists in Donetsk already sentenced two British militants and a Moroccan to death. They appealed this decision.

Russia has had a moratorium on the death penalty since 1997, but not in the two separatist territories in eastern Ukraine.

On February 24, Russian President Vladimir Putin ordered his army to invade Ukraine, whose forces have since put up stiff resistance in Europe’s worst conflict since World War II.

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