Exiled Bashkir activist’s brother jailed in his place on spurious terror charges

A court in the Russian city of Yekaterinburg has sentenced the brother of a well-known Bashkir activist to five and a half years in prison on charges of “promoting terrorist activity”, RFE/RL’s Tatar-Bashkir service reported on Wednesday.

Rustam Fararitdinov, the brother of Bashkir activist Ruslan Gabbasov, was arrested by Russia’s Federal Security Service (FSB) in November on suspicion of having discussed the creation of Bashkir units in the Armed Forces of Ukraine (AFU) with his relatives on WhatsApp.

While Fararitdinov admitted his guilt under interrogation, he has not publicly shared any details about the case. From exile, Gabbasov has stressed that his movement “had nothing to do with this military unit”.

According to Gabbasov, when Fararitdinov was detained, he was told by law enforcement officers that he would “do time for his brother”, adding that Fararitdinov’s wife had passed on a message to him saying that Fararitdinov would be released only if Gabbasov returned to Russia.

Gabbasov, who has campaigned for the independence of Bashkortostan from Russia and is a strong advocate for the preservation of the Bashkir language and culture, emigrated to Lithuania in 2021 after the grassroots movement he co-founded to preserve the ethnic identity of the Bashkirs, Bashkort, was declared “extremist” the previous year.

Before it was dissolved, the Bashkort movement held numerous rallies opposing the industrial development of Kushtau Mountain, a chalk hill considered a sacred site by the Bashkirs, which ultimately resulted in Kushtau being granted protected status in 2020 in a rare win for local activists.