A criminal case was opened against a Kazan religious scholar

On February 8, Kazan Islamic scholar Rais Suleimanov was summoned for interrogation to the investigative department of the Russian Investigative Committee for the Republic of Tatarstan. This is reported by the publication "Evening Kazan" . The subpoena, signed by the deputy head of the Department for the Investigation of Particularly Important Cases, stated that he was being called as a witness, but did not indicate in which particular case.

After the interrogation, which lasted about two hours, the scientist was taken to a search in the apartment where he is registered, then the search was carried out in his mother's apartment. Rais Suleymanov noted that the documents confiscated from him during the search were part of his scientific archive: “I need all this as an expert on ethno-religious politics for scientific research.”

According to Suleymanov's representative Alfred Valiev, during the interrogation and searches it turned out that a criminal case was initiated against Rais Suleymanov under Part 2 of Art. 282 of the Criminal Code (inciting hatred or enmity, as well as humiliation of human dignity).

According to Kommersant , the decision to initiate a criminal case states that since 2011, Suleimanov has been publishing materials on social networks and other Internet resources that indicate “allegedly the presence in the Republic of Tatarstan of a bandit underground of radical Islamists, active groups of national separatists and support for their large number of supporters from among Muslims and Tatars, as well as from the clergy and representatives of the authorities of the republic.

In addition, he allegedly spoke about the "mass persecution" of Russians in Tatarstan. From his publications "it follows that in the Republic of Tatarstan there is propaganda of the national exclusiveness of the Tatars." The expert opinions cited by the investigators say that Suleymanov's materials can "provoke hatred and enmity between representatives of different views, views, interests," as well as "an increase in social tension in society." In his publications, according to the expert opinion, “the form of government, the policy pursued by the authorities are subjected to a negative assessment”, “the groups “Tatars” and “Russians” are opposed.

Earlier, on December 30, the Privolzhsky District Court of Kazan sentenced Suleymanov to seven days of administrative arrest under Part 1 of Art. 20.3 of the Code of Administrative Offenses (public demonstration of paraphernalia of extremist organizations) for publishing photographs with the flags of the Islamic State and Hizb ut-Tahrir, which accompanied reposts of records posted on his VKontakte page with links to interviews with the scientist and articles with his comments. However, the next day the Supreme Court of the Republic of Tatarstan replaced the scientist with seven days of arrest for a fine of one and a half thousand rubles.