Elena Patyaeva—a friend of Seda Suleymanova, who disappeared three years ago after being forcibly returned from St. Petersburg to Chechnya—was detained in Grozny. On August 23, Patyaeva stood by the monument to journalists who died for freedom of speech, holding a sign that read: "I demand an investigation into the murder of Seda Suleymanova." This was reported by the human rights project "Slovo Zashchite" (Word for the Defense).
The Supreme Court of the Russian Federation upheld the sentence of three Crimean Tatar political prisoners - Enver and Riza Omerov and Aider Dzhapparov. They will spend 18, 13 and 17 years in prison respectively.
The defendants called their criminal case “a link in a large chain of persecution of Crimean Tatars on national and religious grounds.” The defense insisted on the next interrogation of hidden witnesses; previously this had happened in gross violation of criminal law.
According to investigators, in 2017, Enver Omerov and Dzhapparov organized a cell of the Islamic party Hizb ut-Tahrir, banned in the Russian Federation, in the territory of the Crimean city of Belogorsk, which included Enver Omerov’s son, Riza.
Since January 2015, criminal cases against Hizb ut-Tahrir began to be initiated in Crimea, which came under the de facto control of Russia. In Ukraine, the party’s activities are not prohibited; activists of the organization published a newspaper, could speak openly in the media and hold mass public events.