Same fake ‘secret witness’ used in multiple Russian ‘trials’ of Crimean Tatar civic journalists and activists
Russia’s Southern District Military Court has rejected the defence’s application to reveal the identity of a ‘secret witness’ in the trial of Rustem Osmanov,(b. 1989, a journalist for the Crimean Solidarity human rights initiative and three Crimean Solidarity activists: Mustafa Abduramanov (b. 1988); Aziz Azizov (b. 1995); and Memet Liumanov (b. 1988). No credible justification for the secrecy was provided, and there are serious grounds for suspecting that the supposed ‘secret witness’ in question has ‘migrated’ from one political trial to another for the past eight years. This would have been known to presiding judge Aleksei Abdulgazhitovich Magamadov who has already taken part in several such trials, resulting in horrific sentences against international recognized political prisoners.
The hearing on 16 December was only the third on the substance of the charges, with the prosecution still presenting the so-called ‘evidence’. As lawyer Emil Kurbedinov noted, this evidence came in the form of an anonymous ‘witness’ under the pseudonym ‘Ibragimov’. The individual’s identity is concealed from the defence, with even his voice distorted. These supposed witnesses typically sit in another room, with the defence often reporting that the long pauses and other signs suggesting that they are often being told what to say. Kurbedinov noted that during the defence’s attempt to question him, Ibragimov’ either claimed to not remember or asserted that he could not answer, since this would reveal his identity. There has never been any proof that a person would be in danger if they testified openly, yet the court invariably allows such unverifiable ‘testimony’, regardless of how close to word-perfect it is when it comes to repeating the indictment, while otherwise suspiciously full of ‘memory lapses’. In fact, Southern District Military Court ‘judges’ do not merely allow such unreliable ‘evidence’, but actively prevent defence questions proving that the individuals are lying, with such questions typically disallowed.
“We are convinced that the secret witness is an agent of the state who migrates from one criminal case to another with the same story. It is for this reason that his identity is kept secret, and not because he fears revenge, as he tried to claim.”
There are, undoubtedly, situations where a witness could legitimately fear exposure. This is not the case here. In all such trials of Crimean Muslims, most of them active participants in the Crimean Tatar human rights movement, the defendants are respected members of their community who are not accused of any recognizable crime. Russia’s FSB accuses them solely of ‘involvement’ in Hizb ut-Tahrir, a peaceful, if controversial, transnational Muslim organization which is legal in Ukraine. Russia’s supreme court never explained its ruling in 2003 which declared Hizb ut-Tahrir a ‘terrorist organization’, nor why it kept the ruling secret until it was too late for the organization itself or human rights NGOs to appeal against it.
Russia began using this ruling as an excuse for illegally bringing ‘terrorism’ charges against Crimean Tatar or other Ukrainian Muslims within a year of its invasion and annexation of Crimea. It has increasingly targeted civic journalists and activists, most of them from Crimean Solidarity, the human rights movement that arose in response to mounting Russian repression. Many victims were first subjected to harassment and administrative prosecution for peaceful acts of solidarity with political prisoners and their families. When that failed to silence them, the FSB staged armed raids, with the men taken away and charged, under Russian terrorism legislation, with ‘involvement’ in an organization that is perfectly legal in Ukraine.
The present case is no exception. Rustem Osmanov had earlier faced persecution for his role as a Crimean Solidarity journalist but had not been cowered. Nor had Mustafa Abduramanov, Aziz Azizov and Memet Liumanov been deterred through such harassment from attending political trials and taking part in other peaceful actions in defence of victims of persecution.
The men were seized in an armed ‘operation’ in both Bakhchysarai and Dzhankoi on 6 March 2024 and have been imprisoned ever since. All appear to be charged with ‘involvement in a Hizb ut-Tahrir group’, under Article 205.5 § 2 of Russia’s criminal code, as well as the even more surreal charge of ‘planning to violently seize power’ (Article 278).
There is no real evidence as such, with these prosecutions typically revolving around illicitly taped conversations on religious and political subjects which are ‘assessed’ by FSB-loyal ‘experts’, and around the ‘testimony’ of secret witnesses.
Since the defendants in this case are from Bakhchysarai, it seems likely that the ‘secret witness’ migrating from ‘trial’ to ‘trial’ is one of two men whose identity is, in fact, known. Both Konstantin Tumarevich and Salakhutdin Nazrullayev are already known to have been used in the ‘trials’ of over ten political prisoners. Both have vulnerable legal positions. Tumarevich is a fugitive from justice and has every reason to want to avoid being sent back to Latvia. Nazrullayev is from Uzbekistan and, at least earlier, did not) have legal papers to enable him to remain in Russian-occupied Crimea. While there is nothing to suggest that either man had anything to fear from the Crimean Tatar community in Bakhchysarai, the scope for FSB pressure on them is evident.
Russia’s reliance on ‘anonymous witnesses’ is in flagrant violation of a European Court of Human Rights ruling and has been condemned by the UN Secretary General in his 2021 report on the situation in occupied Crimea.
The illegality of the charges, the fabricated nature of the ‘evidence’ are glaringly obvious. So too, however, is the political nature of such ‘trials’, with convictions effectively guaranteed, together with sentences, of 12 to 16 years’ in the appalling conditions of the worst of Russian penal institutions.