Rickert told the DOJ he also had video of Lang beating and drowning a woman whom Fischer injected with adrenaline to keep her from passing out. According to Rickert, another foreign fighter captured the incident on video. Fischer’s whereabouts are unknown and he could not be reached for comment.
Pirtle told investigators, according to the DOJ document, that Rickert filmed several of the interrogations and uploaded the videos to his Google accounts, including one in which a man was arrested, thrown into a shower stall and beaten with a stuffed sock. of stones. According to Pirtle, the man was believed to have fought with Russian-backed forces. Pirtle told investigators he saw Lang punch and push the man, demanding his password to a Facebook account because Lang believed he had information about pro-Russian fighters.
A family member of Pirtle said he returned to the United States in the spring of 2016 because he was fed up with the poor living conditions in eastern Ukraine and worried about ” someone who has done terrible things”. That person, the family member said, was Lang. Pirtle, according to the family member, sent them an email explaining that “things are going downhill and he didn’t want to be involved.”
Morhun, Lang’s attorney, did not directly respond to these allegations or any specific allegations, saying “in order to deny or confirm charges, they must be brought,” and since the DOJ did not submit a evidence to him or Lang, “we are talking about assumptions, and it makes no sense to comment.
The DOJ appears to have obtained and reviewed this video and others, writing in the appeal that investigators obtained a warrant authorizing them to search the Google account and emails apparently belonging to Rickert.
“In the first video, LANG’s voice is heard demanding that the man give his password from a social media account,” writes the DOJ. “After the man refused to give LANG his password, someone backstage said, ‘You have to beat him.’ LANG hits the man several times with his knee in the abdomen and head, knocking him to the ground, where he is writhing in pain.
A second video, according to the DOJ, “shows a Ukrainian man repeatedly hitting a man with something hard in a sock in his cell. After this beating, someone similar to RICKERT enters the shower and asks for the man’s password. After that you can see how RICKERT hits the man in the back of the head.
Rickert and Pirtle’s accounts to the DOJ, and the agency’s descriptions of the videos, closely match what BuzzFeed News told a US fighter in Ukraine who knew the members of Task Force Pluto and described them as having a “fetishism for death and torture”. This also matches a screenshot of a video viewed by this reporter which shows a man who appeared to be Lang standing over a man seated and tied up in a small room. This scene is also very similar to the one described by a Deputy press journalist who interviewed Lang, Rickert and Pirtle at the Novohrodivka base in 2016. In this story, a man was held by Right Sector fighters, held in “a standing room shower stall” with the lights on for a week , and beaten with a sock “stuffed with sharp pebbles”.
Google account data, the DOJ writes, also revealed numerous images of Rickert, Lang, Pirtle and others handling weapons and explosives in eastern Ukraine, including in “a trench dug to the fight”.
The DOJ document does not describe any instances in which Kennedy, Kleman, Boyenger, and Plaster took an active part in the abuse of civilians. Plaster, who now runs an NGO in Kyiv that helps Ukrainian veterans, said he was “keeping his distance from anyone with radical ideologies” and providing “medical aid and training” to the country’s soldiers while in First line. Boyenger said: ‘I have always conducted myself with honor and loyalty, as a taxpayer I expect the government to investigate all allegations of wrongdoing to the fullest extent and I look forward to seeing the results of their investigation as much as anyone. “
The DOJ document also states that US authorities believe that Lang and Kennedy, after spending time in the United States, “returned to Ukraine with the intention of planning and participating in an armed attack on Ukraine.” [parliament]” in 2017.
The DOJ says in the document that U.S. authorities in Kyiv received reports around March 14, 2017 that Lang was arrested upon arrival at a Ukrainian airport because authorities “found something similar to a rifle with a silencer and a box full of ammunition” on him.
Kennedy told BuzzFeed News he never anticipated such an attack on Ukraine’s parliament building, calling the accusation “bullshit.” He showed BuzzFeed News his passport, which showed he was not in Ukraine at the time the DOJ claimed he was there. But Kennedy said Lang told her he was detained at a Ukrainian airport and found gun parts in his luggage. Lang did not respond to questions about the alleged incident.
“I believe the FBI is unfairly demonizing and trying to prosecute us for no real reason other than our involvement in Ukraine,” Kennedy told BuzzFeed News.
Kennedy – who also served for a time as a private in the Ukrainian Armed Forces – said Lang convinced him to join Right Sector in April 2016 and he only stayed for a few months. “When I was there, nothing like that happened,” Kennedy said of the alleged war crimes. “We didn’t even take any prisoners the whole time I was there.”