U.S. national tortured to death in Ukraine by Russian soldiers, Moscow says

MOSCOW (Reuters) - Russell Bentley, a U.S. national who went missing in Russian-controlled eastern Ukraine early this year, is believed to have been tortured to death by Russian soldiers who are now set to go on trial, Russia's top investigative body said on Friday.

Bentley died in the Russian-controlled city of Donetsk in April, Margarita Simonyan, head of Russia's state media outlet RT, wrote at the time, saying he had been "fighting there for our guys" and working with Russia's Sputnik news service.

Bentley, born in 1960, was a self-declared supporter of Russian-backed forces in Ukraine. The Russian state news agency RIA reported that he had joined pro-Russian fighters in eastern Ukraine in 2014, later working with Sputnik and obtaining Russian citizenship.

The Investigative Committee said in a statement that it had completed its probe and accused three Russian servicemen of torturing Bentley to death in Donetsk on April 8.

It said two of the soldiers had then put his body in a car and blown it up. A fourth soldier had been ordered the following day to move Bentley's remains to another location in an attempt to conceal the crime.

The Committee's statement said the accused soldiers, whom it named, were familiarising themselves with the allegations before the indictment was sent for approval.

It said they would variously be tried on charges ranging from exceeding their authority, using physical violence and torture, and causing death by negligence, to attempted concealment of a serious crime. It did not say whether or not they had denied the accusations.

Russian media outlets have suggested that the soldiers may have mistaken Bentley - the subject of a 2022 interview with Rolling Stone magazine titled "The Bizarre Story of How a Hardcore Texas Leftist Became a Frontline Putin propagandist" - for a U.S. spy.

(Reporting by Reuters; Writing by Andrew Osborn; Editing by Kevin Liffey)