Mustafa Dzhemiliev’s ban appealed

Lawyer Mark Feygin has lodged an appeal with Russia’s Federal Migration Service against the five-year ban imposed on Crimean Tatar leader and Ukrainian MP Mustafa Dzhemiliev.

Feygin, who is acting as defence lawyer for Nadiya Savchenko, the Ukrainian pilot captured by Kremlin-backed militants and abducted to Russia, met with Mustafa Dzhemiliev in Kyiv towards the end of October and announced that he would be filing an appeal. 

The application has been lodged with the Basmanny Court in Moscow which has gained notoriety over recent years for rubber stamp rulings in politically motivated cases. 

An application has also been lodged with the European Court of Human Rights.

Mustafa Dzhemiliev was informed on April 22 that a 5-year-ban had been imposed on his entering his native Crimea.   Both Moscow and the government installed at gunpoint in the Crimea resorted to dishonest subterfuge with public statements denying the authenticity of the paper informing of the ban.

It was, however, enforced on May 2 when he was stopped from flying to Simferopol via Moscow, and forced to return to Kyiv. 

The Mejlis responded by cancelling all events planned for a festival on May 3 and called on Crimean Tatars to come and meet Dzhemiliev on the border between the Kherson oblast and Crimea.  

Around five thousand Crimean Tatars did precisely that.  In an especially shameful development, armed OMON officers were deployed, together with the so-called Crimean “police” to prevent the 71-year-old Dzhemiliev from crossing into the Crimea.

Since then the occupation regime has also banned Refat Chubarov, head of the Mejlis of the Crimean Tatar people and launched a serious offensive against the Mejlis and, effectively, the Crimean Tatar people