A court in Russia has rejected appeals filed by Crimean Tatar leader Nariman Dzhelyal and two activists -- brothers Aziz and Asan Akhmetov -- against prison terms handed to them in September on a sabotage charge that Kyiv and rights groups call politically motivated.
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The Third Court of Appeals of the Common Jurisdiction in the city of Sochi ruled on July 28 to impose more restrictions on the three men, ordering that they must spend the first three years of their terms in cells and the rest of the time in penal colonies.
A Russia-imposed court in Ukraine's Moscow-annexed Crimea sentenced Dzhelyal to 17 years, Asan Akhmetov to 15 years, and Aziz Akhmetov to 13 years in prison on September 21.
Dzhelyal and his co-defendants were arrested in September 2021 on suspicion of involvement in an attack on a gas pipeline.
Ukraine has called the charges against the activists fabricated, while the United States has urged Russia to release them.
Dzhelyal is deputy chairman of the Crimean Tatar's self-governing assembly, the Mejlis, which was banned by pro-Moscow representatives in Crimea after the annexation in 2014.
The arrest of Dzhelyal and the Akhmetov brothers immediately sparked a protest outside the Crimean office of Russia’s Federal Security Service (FSB) that ended with the detention of more than 50 people.
Interfax reported at the time that the criminal investigation against Dzhelyal and the brothers was related to a gas pipeline that was damaged on August 23 in a village near Crimea’s capital, Simferopol.
Ukrainian Deputy Foreign Minister Emine Dzheppar said after the three men's arrests that their detention was Moscow's "revenge" for Dzhelyal's participation in a Kyiv conference that month dedicated to the "de-occupation" of Crimea.
The event had been decried by Moscow as “anti-Russian.”
Moscow illegally annexed Ukraine’s Crimean Peninsula in 2014 following a disputed referendum that was widely believed to be falsified.