Editor’s Note: The following article was made possible with support from the Objective investigative reporting project, a MYMEDIA project sponsored by Danida, the international support arm of the Danish Foreign Ministry. Content is independent of the donor. This story can be republished freely with credit to the Objective program.
FEODOSIA, Crimea – Suleiman Kadyrov is at his gate in Feodosia, Crimea, dressed impeccably in a suit and tie decorated with the Tamga, the symbol of Crimea’s indigenous minority the Crimean Tatars.
Beyond, the building is painted blue and yellow, the colors of both the Ukrainian and Crimean Tatar flags. In his living room, the two flags take pride of place on the wall. This is a man making no attempt to hide his loyalties, or his conviction that Crimea is still Ukraine.
Convictions – both the personal and the legal kind – figure largely in 54-year-old Kadyrov’s life. As deputy head of criminal investigations in the south-east coastal town of Feodosia, he spent years putting other people behind bars; locals remember at least two high-profile murder cases he solved. Now, he’s facing a court case of his own under Russian criminal law. If convicted, he could spend up to five years in prison for reposting a video and writing a comment under it on Facebook.
Criminal cases
Kadyrov is one of three Crimeans charged under a recent Russian law on “making public calls to action intended to violate the territorial integrity of the Russian Federation,” for their statements that Crimea is Ukrainian territory.
Ilmi Umerov, also a Crimean Tatar and former head of the Bakhchisaray administration, is charged over comments he made on TV channel ATR, and journalist Mykola Semena for an article written under a pseudonym for Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty’s news site Crimea Realities.
Kadyrov, Umerov and Semena are not alone in their opinion about the status of Crimea. On November 15 the International Criminal Court in the Hague released a report concluding that Russia is an occupying power in Crimea. A day later, a United Nations committee approved a Ukraine-sponsored resolution calling Russia an aggressor committing egregious human right abuses in Crimea. The General Assembly is expected to vote on the resolution in December.
“The whole international community recognizes that Crimea is Ukraine,” said Kadyrov. “So by any idea of logic (the Russian authorities) should halt our criminal cases. Or if they continue with our cases, then they have to open a case against the whole United Nations and the court in the Hague.”
In fact the Russian response was to formally withdraw its (unratified) signature from the ICC’s founding treaty, the Rome Statute, the day after the court published its preliminary report.
The relevant Russian legal article (280.1) on Russian territorial integrity was added to the Criminal Code in May 2014, less than two months after Russia annexed Crimea from Ukraine.
“It was written especially for Crimea,” said Kadyrov.
Political act
Maria Kravchenko, who heads the department for monitoring government misuse of counter-extremism measures at the Moscow-based SOVA Centre for Information and Analysis, says that the new article is unnecessary, because any genuine calls for violent violation of Russia’s borders fall under existing laws on extremism or terrorism. “The creation of article 280.1 was a completely political act, that in practice applies to any discussion at all on the subject of territorial integrity,” she said. “It’s a violation of freedom of speech, especially relating to Crimea, where inhabitants have the right to think what they want about the situation; they can welcome it or not, and they should have the right to express their opinion.”
Kadyrov’s offending statement was allegedly written in March 2016 on his personal Facebook page, under a reposted video. According to the lawsuit, his comment read “Suleiman Kadyrov agrees. Crimea is Ukraine, always was and always will be. I thank the author for this video. I support it!!!”
Kadyrov deleted his Facebook page after the lawsuit was brought in October. But the 2014 video he allegedly reposted is still available online, as is a linked page on Russian social media site VKontakte. In the video someone calling himself ‘Demyan Demyanchenko’ (the face and voice are disguised) says he is setting up an armed ‘Crimea battalion’ to liberate Crimea, and asks for donations and volunteers. One of the last posts from ‘Demyan Demyanchenko’ from July 2014 on VKontakte notes that 57 hryvna (then about $7) has been collected for the battalion’s foundation.
Typical situation
Kadyrov is not the first person to go to court over this material. According to Russian court records, a K T Kadyrov (no relation) went on trial in Tomsk in October 2015 for creating the video and a related website and VKontakte page. He was charged with the same offence as his Feodosia namesake.
K T Kadyrov pleaded guilty. The court, without examining the evidence, sentenced him to 300 hours community service, but immediately cancelled it under an April 2015 amnesty in honour of the 70 anniversary of World War II victory.
Kadyrov considers it absurd, or an active provocation, that material already found to break Russian law was still available online a year later for him to allegedly repost and so fall under the same criminal prosecution. But according to Kravchenko from SOVA, this is a typical situation.
“From our point of view, if law enforcement agencies are determined to tackle dangerous material on the internet, then they should make sure it is not being distributed,” she said. “They should work with website owners to ensure materials are removed, or if they are not, start court proceedings to get them removed.”
Instead, she said, law enforcement staff “go to work in the morning, get a cup of coffee, sit at the computer and catch 25 people who are distributing some kind of videos or pictures or phrases.”
“It’s very convenient,” she said. “They don’t have to go far, it doesn’t require collecting any complicated evidence; the expertise is very poor and unprofessional and the courts are obedient.”
Suleyman Kadyrov, Crimean tatar activist, shows his medal and ID for serving in the Ukrainian police for 20 years on November 17th, 2016. FSB opened criminal case against his on charges of extremism. (Courtesy)
Oath breakers
SOVA considers the particular online material in Kadyrov’s case does indeed constitute dangerous material, because it calls for armed action to free Crimea.
Kadyrov claims he can’t remember reposting the video or writing the comment, and suspects it was faked. He also claims that his comment, if indeed he wrote it, does not violate the law.
“All I said was that Crimea is Ukraine. That’s my point of view and I’ve never hidden it, because I didn’t change my oath like many other former state employees did,” he said. “I gave my oath to Ukraine. Why should I as an officer and a citizen be forced to break it?”
Kadyrov worked for over 20 years for the Ukrainian Interior Ministry in the Feodosia criminal police, before retiring in 2010. He was elected a local representative of the Crimean Tatar governing body, the Mejlis, the 2011.
In spring 2014 Kadyrov watched as the vast majority of his former work colleagues defected to join Russian police and security services, while the Mejlis briefly considered whether to cooperate with the new authorities. This betrayal and indecision drove his outspoken opposition to Russian rule.
“For a while our old (Crimean Tatar) activists couldn’t understand what was happening,” he said. “In Feodosia there was a complete collapse. No one could say anything. During this toughest time for our people who takes responsibility? An officer, or someone who gave his oath to Ukraine and won’t break it.”
The Mejlis was banned by Russia as an extremist organisation earlier this year.
Kadyrov began monitoring human rights abuses in Feodosia. He gave interviews to the Crimean TV channel ATR (now closed down in Crimea), attended court hearings of other Crimean Tatars who oppose annexation and helped prosecute a case against a woman in Feodosia who verbally abused a Crimean Tatar ambulance nurse on a call-out (the woman was fined 1,000 rubles for incitement to ethnic hatred.) His house was searched twice by Russian security services, in November 2015 and on Oct. 5 2016, when his computer was confiscated. The law suit was brought two days later. Kadyrov believes he’s been targeted because of his activism.
Fight to the end
While he awaits a hearing, Kadyrov is free to travel around Crimea; the other two Crimeans facing the same charges are not allowed to leave their home towns of Bakhchisaray and Sevastopol. In Russia, three cases brought under article 180.1 have led to prison terms; others resulted in fines or suspended sentences. One defendant was sent for enforced psychiatric treatment. Ilmi Umerov in Bakhchisaray was also confined in a psychiatric hospital for three weeks after he refused a court order that he undergo a psychiatric examination, which is not foreseen by the charges against him.
A trained lawyer, Kadyrov monitors these cases, as well as filling notebooks with articles on the right to freedom of speech and opinion enshrined in the Russian constitution and Russian and international law, to defend his own case.
“I’ll fight to the end; I’ll never give up,” he said. “But it just doesn’t tally with my lawyer’s head, how to fight with this system.”
