On June 30, the Lefortovo District Court of Moscow extended the detention of Crimean Tatar Lenya Umerova, suspected of espionage. The 25-year-old girl, a citizen of Ukraine, was detained in December when she came to Russia to visit her sick father.
Lenya Umerova is a native of Crimea, she has lived in Kyiv since 2015 and has never received a Russian passport. In December 2022, she went to Crimea to visit her father, who was suffering from cancer. I traveled through Bulgaria, Romania and Georgia. On the night of December 4, the girl was taken off the bus at the Russian-Georgian border at the Verkhniy Lars checkpoint. She was taken to the police department in Vladikavkaz, and then released, sent to a country hotel. However, on the way, her taxi was stopped; the police said that Umerova had violated the rules for the stay of foreigners in the Russian Federation.
On December 4, the Prigorodny District Court fined her 2 thousand rubles and ordered her expulsion from the country for violating the rules of crossing the state border. She was placed in the Temporary Detention Center for Foreign Citizens (TSVSIG), where she spent more than three months.
In March, the decision on deportation was canceled - the Supreme Court of North Ossetia and the Fifth Court of Cassation in Pyatigorsk ruled that Umerova did not pose a danger to Russia.
According to Lenya Umerova, she was released from TsVSIG at night, but a car with four men was waiting for her near the gate, who grabbed her, put a bag over her head and took her to an unfamiliar area of Vladikavkaz. There she was almost immediately detained by a police patrol. A report was drawn up against the girl regarding disobedience to the legal demands of the Ministry of Internal Affairs officers. After that, the court arrested her four more times for 15 days for this offense.
On May 4, the girl’s relatives learned that FSB officers had taken her from the Vladikavkaz pre-trial detention center in an unknown direction.
“The parents tried to visit the detention center, but they were not allowed in, saying that Lenya was no longer there. As it turned out, the FSB took her along with her things. To the parents’ questions, where she was taken, on what basis, and why they were not informed, a short answer was provided: “This is the FSB - a higher authority, they do not report to us,” said the girl’s brother Aziz Umerov. - No one doubted that the FSB would come for her, because all these five months they had been falsifying the criminal case against Lenya, but were never able to bring a single official charge; instead she was blatantly kidnapped without explanation.”
Later it became known that Umerova was taken to the Lefortovo pre-trial detention center in Moscow. On May 5, the Lefortovo court chose a measure of restraint for her in the form of detention. In court, the TASS agency was told that Umerova is suspected of treason (Article 275 of the Criminal Code of the Russian Federation), but the court’s website lists another article - 276, “espionage.”
On May 16, the FSB released a video recording of two men in civilian clothes and masks leading a girl in handcuffs along a telescopic ladder from an airplane. Her face is blurred, but her family recognized her as Umerova. As RIA Novosti reported, “the FSB uncovered a 25-year-old Ukrainian spy who was transmitting information about Russian military facilities and equipment of the Vostok group.” The woman was arrested and a case was opened under the article of espionage.”
On June 30, Umerova’s period of detention was extended. However, the details of her case are not reported - the decision, which should be published on the court’s website, is classified.