Two people were sentenced to real terms for involvement in a non-existent organization

On June 27, the Supreme Court of Bashkortostan sentenced to real terms two local residents accused of involvement in the Nurcular religious organization banned in Russia. It is reported by Kommersant with reference to Interfax.

On March 20, the Oktyabrsky District Court of Ufa sentenced five people involved in this case to suspended sentences. However, after considering the appeal of the prosecutor's office, the Supreme Court of the republic replaced Aivar Abutalipova and Azamat Khabibullin with suspended sentences for real ones and sentenced them to four years and two years and three months in a penal colony, respectively. Khabibullin served as the head of the procurement department of the State Budgetary Institution of the Republic of Belarus “Economic Management”, and Abutalipov worked as a journalist for the Kiske Ufa newspaper. Both left their posts. The investigation considers them to be the organizers of the activities of an extremist organization, and the other three are participants. In March, Abutalipov and Khabibullin each received four years of probation.

The owner of the language school, Shamil Khusnitdinov, was sentenced to a year and ten months probation. The teachers of this school, Timur Munasypov and Airat Ibragimov, also, according to the investigation, members of the Nurcular organization, received two years of probation each. Their probationary period is three years. The court of appeal upheld the sentences of all three.

People who study the works of the Turkish theologian Said Nursi, banned and recognized as extremist in Russia since May 2014, are accused of being involved in the Nurcular movement. At the same time, there is no evidence of the existence of this organization on the territory of the Russian Federation.