33 Mejlis members in danger

On September 29, the Supreme Court of the Russian Federation rejected the complaint against the decision of the court of first instance to recognize the Mejlis of the Crimean Tatar people as an extremist organization. Kirill Koroteev, senior lawyer of the Memorial Human Rights Center, who represented the interests of the Mejlis, commented on the current decision of the court for OVD-Info.

In principle, it was a fairly ordinary appeal hearing, although with some peculiarities. In the morning, the police were on duty at the Armed Forces of the Russian Federation, we were in a large courtroom, and the three judges who heard the appeal had the only case today (usually a panel of three judges listens to a dozen appeals in a row).

One of the judges reported the case for a long time: what are the arguments of the prosecutor's office, what are the motives in the decision of the Crimean court, what are the grounds and arguments of the appeal. As the party that filed the appeal, we were the first to speak (me and my colleague from Memorial Human Rights Center Marina Agaltsova), arguing that Mezhdlis is a body of democratic representation, and not a public organization, that a claim for recognition as extremist cannot be brought against such a body that the activity cannot be considered extremist, etc.

After the break, the prosecutor's office spoke, reading out some of its written response to our complaint and some of its original claim (including arguments not accepted by the Crimean court, for example, the events of February 26, 2014).

The Crimean State Committee for National Affairs spoke the least on the case, whose lawyer talked about how wonderful life is for the Crimean Tatars now and how bad it was in Ukraine (and they will also build a mosque, it will be the largest - to the envy of Kadyrov, apparently, but I’m speaking on my own).

The court deliberated for an hour and delivered only the operative part: the decision was left unchanged, the complaint was not satisfied.

As for the consequences: membership in an extremist organization is a crime under Russian law. 33 members of the Majlis are in danger, and the authorities "on the ground" can extend the persecution to members of regional and local Majlis, then hundreds can be repressed.