Crimean Tatar Emil Kurbedinov, a lawyer who has defended several prominent Crimean Tatar activists tried in Russian-occupied Crimea, was on Jan. 26 sentenced to 10 days in jail by Zheleznodorozhny District Court in Simferopol for extremism.
Anton Naumlyuk, a Radio Liberty journalist based in Crimea, tweeted the news after the court gave its verdict. He said Kurbedinov is being punished for re-posting several items and a picture of a flag of Hizb ut-Tahrir, an international pan-Islamic political organization, which aims to re-establish “the Islamic Khilafah (caliphate)” and is banned in several countries, including Russia.
Kurbedinov partly admitted guilt, saying he indeed shared several Hizb ut-Tahrir-related posts, but that he was not promoting the organization.
Naumlyuk wrote that after the lawyer was arrested, law enforcers conducted a search of his office and apartment in Simferopol while Kurbedinov was in court. The judge closed the court hearing to the press without giving a reason for doing so, Naumlyuk wrote.
“He will serve his jail term in the Zheleznodorozhny Police department of Simferopil,” Naumlyuk told the Kyiv Post. “Currently, there’s no contact with him. Let’s hope they (the police) will pass the stuff and goods needed in jail to him.”
As a lawyer, Kurbedinov has defended in court several prominent Crimean Tatars, including Ilmi Umerov, the former head of the Supreme Council of the Autonomous Republic of Crimea, who was arrested in May 2016 by Russia’s Federal Security Service (FSB) on suspicion of calling for the violation of Russia’s territorial integrity.
Refat Chubarov, the leader of the Crimean Tatar representative body the Mejlis, and a Bloc of Petro Poroshenko lawmaker, said that Kuberdinov’s conviction marks the start of a new wave of repression of the Crimean Tatars, about on the annexed peninsula.
Chubarov wrote that the latest crackdown had started on Jan. 25, when the FSB arrested Russian lawyer Nikolay Polozov, who on Jan. 23 took part in Ukrainian PACE delegation briefing in Strasburg.
The next day, armed FSB officers broke into and searched the apartment of Zodiya Salieva, a member of the Crimean Tatars National Movement, where she lived with her son Seyran, his wife and three children, Chubarov wrote. On the same day of the search of Salieva’s apartment, Seyran was detained and then sentenced to 12 days in jail.
“In May 2016 Seyran Saliev gave a speech via a mosque loudspeaker, accusing the FSB of numerous attacks on Crimean Tatars houses in Bakhchysaray. For that he was ordered to pay a 20,000-ruble fine,” Chubarov wrote.
Kurbedinov was one of Saliev’s defense lawyers. A few minutes before Saliev’s arrest, Kurbedinov published a video on Facebook, in which he and his colleague Edem Semedlyaev are stopped by traffic police in Simferopil while heading to Salieva’s apartment to be present during the search.
Later on Jan. 26 Kurbedinov himself was arrested.
Zaur Smirnov, a pro-Russian representative of the Crimean Department of Interethnic Relations, later told the independent Russian TV channel Dozhd that the arrests were part of an FSB operation to liquidate a Hizb ut-Tahrir cell in Crimea.
But in his Facebook post, Chubarov rubbished Smirnov’s claims.
“Fortunately there are very few (traitors) like Zaur among the Crimean Tatars. The time of revenge will come,” Chubarov wrote.
