A court in Russia has sentenced two Crimean Tatar activists to lengthy prison terms after convicting them of being members of a banned Islamic group amid an ongoing crackdown on the ethnic group that has been critical of Russia's illegal annexation of Crimea in 2014.
Russia's Southern District Military Court in the southwestern city of Rostov-on-Don on March 22 sentenced Timur Yalkabov and Lenur Seydametov to 17 years and 13 years in prison, respectively.
The defendants, who pleaded not guilty, were arrested in February 2021 along with four others in Russian-occupied Crimea. Hizb ut-Tahrir is an Islamic group banned in Russia but not in Ukraine.
Ukrainian Ombudswoman Lyudmyla Denisova condemned the sentencing of Ukrainian citizens by Russian authorities.
"By illegal trials of Crimean Tatars and other illegally held Ukrainian citizens, the country-occupier, the Russian Federation, violates the norms of the international law, the European Convention on Human Rights, and the Universal Declaration of Human Rights," Denisova said on Telegram.
Last week, the same court sentenced five other Crimean Tatars to prison on the same charge.
Since Moscow seized Crimea, Russian authorities have prosecuted dozens of Crimean Tatars for allegedly belonging to the Islamic group.
Moscow's takeover of the peninsula was vocally opposed by many Crimean Tatars, who are a sizable minority in the region.
Exiled from their homeland to Central Asia by Soviet authorities under the dictatorship of Josef Stalin during World War II, many Crimean Tatars are very wary of Russia and Moscow's rule.