Verdicts Expected In Extremism Case Against Five Crimean Tatars In Russia
By the Crimea Desk of RFE/RL's Ukrainian Service
ROSTOV-ON-DON, Russia -- A court in Russia is expected to render verdicts and sentences on June 18 for five Crimean Tatars charged with being members of the Hizb ut-Tahrir Islamic group that is banned in Russia but legal in Ukraine.
Uzeiyr Abdullayev, Teymur Abdullayev, Ayder Saledinov, Rustem Ismaiylov, and Emil Dzhemadenov were arrested in October 2016 after Russia-controlled authorities in Ukraine's Crimea searched their homes.
Two months later, they were transferred to a detention center in the Russian city of Rostov-on Don.
One of their lawyers, Lilya Hemedzhi, told RFE/RL that the prosecutor at the trial on June 10 asked the North Caucasus Regional Military Court to find the defendants guilty and sentence them to prison terms of between 11 and 17 years.
Last week, eight other Crimean Tatars were arrested in Crimea and charged with belonging to Hizb ut-Tahrir.
Since Russia seized the peninsula in 2014, Russian authorities have prosecuted dozens of Crimean Tatars for allegedly belonging to Hizb ut-Tahrir.
Earlier, in March-April, Russia's Federal Security Service detained 24 Crimean Tatars, also on suspicion of being members of the group, following house-to-house searches in Crimea.
Rights groups and Western governments have denounced what they describe as a campaign of repression by the Russian-imposed authorities in Crimea who are targeting members of the Turkic-speaking Crimean Tatar community and others who have spoken out against Moscow's takeover of the peninsula.
In its annual report on religious freedom worldwide, released on April 29, the U.S. Commission on International Religious Freedom (USCIRF) said that "[in] Russian-occupied Crimea, the Russian authorities continued to kidnap, torture, and imprison Crimean Tatar Muslims at will."
Russia took control of Crimea from Ukraine in March 2014 after sending in troops, seizing key facilities, and staging a referendum dismissed as illegal by at least 100 countries. Moscow also backs separatists in a war against government forces that has killed some 13,000 people in eastern Ukraine since April 2014.
Former U.S. Ambassador To Head Embassy During Ukrainian Elections
The former U.S. ambassador to Ukraine, William Taylor, will lead America’s diplomatic mission in Kyiv during parliamentary elections in July, the U.S. Embassy in Kyiv said on June 18.
The 72-year-old Taylor will serve as charge d’affaires during the election campaign and July 21 vote, the embassy said in a statement.
He replaces Kristina Kvien, the deputy chief of mission who took over as acting charge d'affaires following the departure of U.S. Ambassador Marie Yovanovitch in May.
Taylor was ambassador to Ukraine from 2006 to 2009 and most recently was executive vice president at the U.S. Institute of Peace.
Taylor said in a June 18 statement that he wants to build “strong working relationships” with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy and his team as well as “other Ukrainian officials and political forces.”
He said the United States also wants to maintain its “strong partnerships with civil society organizations and the Ukrainian people.”
“The United States remains deeply committed to the success of a stable, prosperous, democratic, and free Ukraine, and we continue to stand in support of Ukraine’s sovereignty and territorial integrity,” Taylor said.
Ukrainian President Seeks 'Pressure' On Russia At Talks With Merkel In Berlin
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy is due to meet with German Chancellor Angela Merkel in Berlin on June 18 – a day after Zelenskiy urged Kyiv’s European backers to keep “pressure” on Russia to end the conflict in eastern Ukraine.
German government spokesman Steffen Seibert said the agenda of Merkel’s meeting with Zelenskiy included talks on the implementation of the Minsk accords and the course of reforms in separatist-controlled eastern Ukraine.
Seibert said the two also would discuss issues related to the construction of the Nord Stream 2 gas pipeline, which is meant to carry Russian natural gas beneath the Baltic Sea to Germany but faces a threat of new U.S. sanctions.
Washington, Kyiv, and Poland argue that the Nord Stream 2 pipeline would help Russia bypass infrastructure in Ukraine, allowing Moscow to use energy supplies as an economic weapon against its neighbors without disrupting its exports to Western Europe.
Russia and Germany maintain that the pipeline is strictly a commercial project.
On June 17, during a visit to Paris where he met with French President Emmanuel Macron, Zelenskiy called for European Union countries not to ease up their pressure on Moscow over its seizure and annexation of Ukraine’s Crimean Peninsula and Russia’s support for separatist fighters in eastern Ukraine.
Based on reporting by Reuters, AP, AFP, dpa, and the Kyiv Post
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