Vojislav Torden jail term cut in Finland war case

A Finnish court on Monday reduced the life sentence of Vojislav Torden, a Russian neo-Nazi convicted of war crimes, to 12 years and six months in a case tied to a 2014 ambush in Ukraine.

Torden, a former deputy commander of the Russian neo-Nazi paramilitary group Rusich, had been found guilty in Helsinki last year of war crimes committed during the ambush in the Lugansk region of eastern Ukraine. The attack on a convoy of Ukrainian soldiers left 22 Ukrainians dead and four injured.

The Helsinki Court of Appeal found there was insufficient evidence that Torden had killed or wounded the Ukrainian soldiers. It found, however, that he had participated in the ambush and fired a light machine gun at Ukrainian soldiers, which constituted a war crime.

The appeals court also said Torden had not held a superior role responsible for the shooting of wounded Ukrainian soldiers.

The court dismissed an earlier finding that he had authorised fighters to mutilate Ivan Issyk by cutting into his cheek the kolovrat, or “spoked wheel”, symbol used by the group. The court found that the incident had taken place but did not rise to the level of a war crime. Issyk died as a result of his wounds.

The court upheld that Torden was guilty of taking derogatory photos of a fallen soldier at the scene and posting them to social media.

Torden was tried in Finland after he was arrested there and Helsinki refused to extradite him to Ukraine. Finland applies universal jurisdiction, a legal principle allowing charges on its soil for suspected serious crimes committed anywhere in the world.

The Court of Appeal's judgment can be appealed at the Supreme Court.