A Russian military court on March 22 sentenced two Crimean Tatar men to long prison terms for peaceful activities. Timur Yalkabov received 17 years and Lenur Seidametov received 13. Both were active in the Crimean Solidarity movement, formed to advocate for Tatar rights after the illegal annexation of the Crimean Peninsula by Russia in 2014. They were charged with membership in Hizb ut-Tahrir [9], a transnational Muslim civic organization that is legal in Ukraine. Seidametov and Yalkabov were arrested, with four other Crimean Tatars, in night raids on their homes [10] by Russia's FSB secret police in February 2021, in which "prohibited" literature was supposedly found. Seidametov's wife has said [11] that the FSB agents planted the literature. Russia's Supreme Court declared Hizb ut-Tahrir a "terrorist" organization in 2003, a ruling that has been widely used to prosecute [12] Crimean Tatars for "involvement" in the group. Both men are recognized [13] as political prisoners by the Memorial Human Rights Center [14], Russia's leading rights organization. (Kharkiv Human Rights Protection Group [15])
The Memorial Human Rights Center is itself now threatened with closure [17] by Russian authorities amid a fast-escalating crackdown on dissent [18].
