The body of Paul Urey, a British aid volunteer who died after being captured by Russian fighters in Ukraine, has been returned to the UK.
Family members of the Warrington man raised £9,000 to repatriate his body after the Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office (FCDO) said it was unable to pay the transport costs.
Urey, 45, was captured by pro-Russia separatists along with other British nationals in April after travelling to Donetsk.
He had initially planned to join the Ukrainian Foreign Legion, but was rejected on health grounds and became an aid volunteer.
Shortly after he was captured at a checkpoint near the south-eastern city of Zaporizhzhia, his family members begged his Russian captors to provide him with the medication he needed to manage his type 1 diabetes.
When his death was reported in July, a Russian official, Natalya Nikonorov, blamed “acute coronary insufficiency aggravated by pulmonary and brain edema”.
Urey was also in a “depressed psychological state due to indifference to his fate in his homeland”, another official told Russian state media.
Despite speculation that his captors had withheld his lifesaving medication, one of the Britons detained with him said he had been given insulin.
Dylan Healy also described being tortured, however, and said the pair had endured a mock execution.
The 22-year-old told the Mirror: “There was no panic, I was resigned. I didn’t want to cry because it wasn’t going to change it. They shouted at you if you slept.
“They waterboarded me. They put me on a table, put a rag in my mouth and poured water in until I was choking.
“When I spoke to Paul he said this hadn’t happened to him. They wanted to know how we’d got behind the lines and why, and if we were British spies.
“There were regular beatings, every day. They had old-style police batons and my ribs were broken.
“The Russians have a love of Tasering, they had these long prongs which they put on your skin. Paul had been Tasered, he said it was easier than he thought it would be.”
When Urey’s body was released in September, Ukraine’s foreign minister, Dmytro Kuleba, claimed an examination showed “signs of possible unspeakable torture”.
Healy, who described his time in captivity as a “harrowing experience” which he did not expect to survive, said Urey had been subjected to another beating two days before he died.
“They did something to make him scream for 10, 20 seconds,” he said. “I don’t think I’ll ever hear someone scream like that again. That was the last time I saw Paul alive.”
