Russian-backed separatists say family can speak with condemned Moroccan - RIA

Russian-backed separatists in eastern Ukraine have granted relatives permission to speak with a Moroccan citizen sentenced to death for fighting with Ukrainian forces, the RIA Novosti agency reported on Monday, citing a top official in the self-proclaimed Donetsk People's Republic (DPR).

A court in the breakaway DPR, which is recognised only by Russia, this month sentenced Brahim Saadoun, 21, and two Britons to death in what Western politicians have decried as a show trial.

Although the men were all serving under contract with the Ukrainian armed forces fighting the Russian invasion, both the DNR and Moscow consider them mercenaries, and therefore outside the protection of the Geneva Conventions, which forbid the execution of prisoners of war.

Unlike Russia, the DNR, which Moscow says it wants to "liberate" from Ukrainian control, has the death penalty on its statute book.

"The relatives contacted the lawyers who were provided to the gentleman ... in particular, there was a request for communication and also to provide their own lawyer," RIA Novosti quoted Natalya Nikonorova, foreign minister of the DNR, as saying. "As far as I know, this request was granted."

DPR officials said Saadoun as well as Britons Aiden Aslin and Shaun Pinner have less than two weeks left to appeal the sentence, which was handed down following a rapid trial inside the breakaway republic.