The ruling is a shocking travesty of justice and one that Ukraine should not ignore, as Russia is staging the same fatally flawed ‘trials’ in occupied Crimea

Any silence from western countries, the Ukrainian Diaspora and from human rights and journalist organizations will be taken by Russia as a carte blanche for further persecution.

A Russian court on 16 September 2020 sentenced Crimean Tatar civic journalist Seiran Saliyev to 16 years’ imprisonment on an identical charge to that used by the Soviet regime against his great-grandfather.

f Russia was hoping through the wonderful acquittal of Ernes Ametov to prove that these are real ‘trials’ before independent courts, there is no chance. All eight civic journalists and activists have long been recognized as political prisoners, and all should have been acquitted.

I don’t want my children, my people to live in a country of threats and intimidation; of humiliation and torture; of abductions and illegal arrests; of aggression and repression. I know that everyone is against all of that, against what is happening in Crimea - Server Mustafayev

The prosecution’s case is essentially based on the testimony of a Ukrainian turncoat, now working for the Russian FSB; two secret witnesses whose identity and motives for testifying are known and the ‘expert assessments’ of three people with no expert knowledge of the subject.

Russia is illegally holding Emir-Usein Kuku and four other Ukrainian prisoners of conscience thousands of kilometres from their homes, and in conditions that are freezing for men accustomed to the warm climate of Crimea

The real aim of five clone trials is almost certainly to deflect attention from Russia’s most brazen attack to date on Crimean Tatar civic journalists and activists informing the world about violations in occupied Crimea and helping the victims of persecution

A week has passed since Muslim Aliev’s family learned that the Ukrainian political prisoner and Amnesty International prisoner of conscience was suffering from coronavirus, and they have no idea even where he is being held

Crimean Solidarity activist and political prisoner, Rayim Aivazov has had the charges against him significantly increased , just as the Russian ‘investigators’ threatened when Aivazov retracted a confession which they had extracted through torture

The concept of a ‘protected witness’ has a quite different meaning for Russian courts, especially when the aim is to imprison Crimean Tatar political prisoners for up to 20 years without any crime

A week after a Russian court in Rostov denied Crimean Tatar political prisoner Server Mustafayev his right to defend himself in court, the same judges have filed a formal complaint against one of the defence lawyers on equally unwarranted grounds

It has become so standard that ‘courts’ automatically extend detention without trial of Ukrainian political prisoners, that the hearings are scarcely worth reporting. Except when something goes wrong, which is what happened in the case of Osman Arifmemetov

The Russian court in Rostov first refused to allow four defence witnesses to give testimony once it was ascertained that they had nothing to say against the men, and then expelled Server Mustafayev until the end of the trial after the latter tried to object

A week after Archbishop Klyment was threatened with criminal prosecution if he did not demolish a Ukrainian Orthodox chapel in Yevpatoria, Russia’s Supreme Court has taken a decision which places in jeopardy the very existence of the Ukrainian Orthodox Church in occupied Crimea

Archbishop Klyment, Head of the Ukrainian Orthodox Church in Crimea, has been ordered to demolish an Orthodox chapel in Yevpatoria, and threatened with criminal prosecution if he does not comply within five days.

The evidence is disturbingly primitive and shows a frightening failure to distinguish between Islam and an organization which is legal in Ukraine but which Russia is unwarrantedly treating as ‘terrorist’

Russia’s puppet Crimean leader Sergei Aksyonov thanked the FSB for their persecution of seven Crimean Muslims, including a man who is blind and unable to move freely. Aksyonov hid behind closed doors, however, when a group of elderly veterans of the Crimean Tatar national movement arrived, demanding an apology

Seven men were arrested in occupied Crimea on 7 July 2020 in Russia’s new fabricated ‘Hizb ut-Tahrir’ case, with the FSB having reached new depths and arrested a man who is totally blind

Several Crimean Tatar prisoners and their cellmates have been threatened and punished because they refused to take part in the pseudo ‘referendum’ on amendments to Russia’s Constitution