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Two British fighters captured while fighting in Ukraine were forced to beg for their lives during scripted phone calls to family members and UK journalists by the Russian-backed separatists who are holding them captive, it has been revealed.

Aiden Aslin, 28, and Shaun Pinner, 48, were convicted of being 'mercenaries' and conducting 'terrorist activities' for fighting with Ukrainian troops, in what Tory minister Robert Jenrick called a 'Soviet-era style show trial', weeks after they were captured during the siege of Mariupol.