Russia had already held Rustem Gugurik in custody for three years on legally absurd charges when, in February 2025, they came for Rustem’s elder brother, Bekir Gugurik. He too was accused of ‘involvement’ in the Noman Çelebicihan Battalion, which, despite the name, is a peaceful, unarmed and perfectly legal civic formation in Ukraine. There is no proof to back the charges, with the armed men who searched his home instead focusing, as though ‘incriminating’, on the Crimean Tatar flag and the words ‘Crimea is Ukraine’ found on his son’s computer.
Both brothers are victims of what Zarema Barieva, Manager of the Crimean Tatar Resource Centre [CTRC], calls systematic torture and the impunity of the Russian invaders, with this taking a huge toll on the two men’s health. After three and a half years of Russian imprisonment, 53-year-old Rustem Gugurik has aged decades, Barieva reports. He has lost all hearing in one ear, and around 50% in the other, and constantly suffers from high blood pressure although he never had any such issues before being seized on 27 March 2022. All such issues are exacerbated by the lack of timely medical care. CTRC has now learned that Rustem has a bad gum infection, which is causing toothache and has caused his face to swell beyond recognition. Given the lack of any medical help, he was forced to remove a dental bridge by himself, a procedure that many people would find extremely painful even if carried out under anaesthetic.
The situation cannot be better for 62-year-old Bekir Gugurik, however he is being held incommunicado in the SIZO [remand prison] in occupied Chonhar. It seems there have been three ‘court hearings’ in the charges against him, however the fourth keeps being posted. There is reason to believe that pressure is being brought to bear on Bekir by the Russian-appointed ‘lawyer’ who is trying to convince him to ‘admit guilt’, claiming that in this way he can hope for a milder sentence.
As if the persecution of the two brothers was not lawless enough, Barieva reports that the invaders took advantage of the fact that Bekir Gugurik is a widower, whose children live separately, and moved into his house after abducting him in early February 2025.
Although Russia began persecuting Crimean Tatars over alleged involvement in the Noman Çelebicihan Battalion back in 2018, the number of such cases rose dramatically after Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine. The charges have increasingly been laid against Crimean Tatars and other Ukrainians abducted from occupied Kherson oblast, with these ‘trials’ in name alone, since ‘convictions’ are guaranteed.
The Noman Çelebicihan Battalion was founded at the beginning of January 2016 by Crimean Tatar activist and businessman Lenur Islyamov and was made up initially by people taking part in the Civic Blockade of Crimea, initiated in September 2015 by Crimean Tatar leaders with specifically human rights demands. Both the Blockade itself and the Battalion were immensely irritating to Moscow, but it was the latter’s behaviour that was illegal, not the Battalion. Despite this, and its evident lack of any jurisdiction, Russia uses its legislation to claim that this is ‘participation in the activities of an unlawful armed formation acting on the territory of a foreign country for purposes which are against the interests of the Russian Federation” under Article 208 § 2 of Russia’s criminal code.
Rustem Gugurik is a taxi driver from Novooleksiivka in Kherson oblast. As reported, he was seized on 27 March, together with his wife Victoria and their 6-year-old daughter, at the Chonhar checkpoint between mainland Ukraine and occupied Crimea. Russia had once banned Gugurik and his brother from visiting occupied Crimea, but had supposedly withdrawn the ban, only to imprison him when he tried to enter. Rustem was taken away, while Victoria and their daughter were held for around 56 hours, without any food, only water.
Rustem Gugurik was imprisoned from then on. He was sentenced on 25 October 2022 to eight and a half years’ imprisonment, with he first year in a prison, the very worst of Russian penitentiary institutions; the rest in a maximum-security prison colony. The charge was that cited above, under Article 208 § 2 of Russia’s criminal cod, and the sentence passed by ‘judge’ Olga Kuznetsova from the occupation ‘Kievsky district court’ in Simferopol. Rustem says that he was never involved in the Battalion, only in the Civic Blockade, which he had assumed was the reason for the earlier ban on entering occupied Crimea. Given that Rustem denied the charges, it is a telling indictment of the nature of such prosecutions that there were a mere five ‘hearings’, with no notification provided of the last hearing where sentence was passed on 25 October 2022.
