Sentence to Akhtem Chiygoz

On September 11 at 10:00 am, the Supreme Court of the annexed Crimea will announce the verdict to the deputy chairman of the Mejlis of the Crimean Tatar people, Akhtem Chiygoz, the main defendant in the "February 26 case." The prosecution asked for eight years of general regime for Chiygoz . This is the minimum term provided for by part 1 of article 212 of the Russian Criminal Code (organization of mass riots), which is charged with a political prisoner; the maximum sanction is 15 years in prison.

On February 26, 2014, Maidan protests, mostly Crimean Tatars, disrupted a planned vote in the Verkhovna Rada of Crimea to call an illegal separatist "referendum". A year later, the occupation authorities began to fabricate a case of "mass riots." The reason was clashes between Euromaidan supporters and participants in a rally of pro-Russian forces, which was simultaneously held near the parliament. As stated by the Russian prosecutor's office of the peninsula, during these clashes "two people were killed, 79 were inflicted with injuries of varying severity."

Chiygoz was the first to be arrested in the case. He was detained on January 29, 2015 and sent to a pre-trial detention center on the same day.

In addition to the deputy chairman of the Mejlis, there were seven other defendants in the case: Eskender Kantemirov, Eskender Emirvaliev, Talyat Yunusov, Ali Asanov, Eskender Nebiev, Mustafa Degermendzhi and Arsen Yunusov. Unlike the main defendant, they were charged with part 2 of Article 212 of the Code (participation in mass riots), which provides for a term of 3 to 8 years.

Nebiev and Talat Yunusov made a deal with the prosecutor's office, and their materials were separated into separate proceedings. At various times in late 2015, both received suspended sentences.

The main "case of February 26" began to be considered in the Supreme Court of Crimea in December 2015, but a month and a half later, in February 2016, it was returned to the prosecutor's office.

Last summer, after the repeated submission to the court, the case was divided - the materials regarding Chiygoz were separated into a separate proceeding. Hearings on the case of the deputy chairman of the Mejlis opened in August 2016. In total, more than 150 hearings were held in the case.

Hearings on the case of the other five defendants have been underway since autumn in the Russian-controlled Central District Court of Simferopol; the trial is led by Judge Sergei Demenok. In early April, the last two defendants who had been held in the pre-trial detention center until then - Asanov and Degermendzhi - were transferred to house arrest.

On March 6, 2017, speaking at the trial of Chiygoz, Asanov and Degermendzhi reported that Mufti of Crimea Emirali Ablaev, known as a collaborator and informer, at meetings in the premises of the TFR in 2015, urged each of them to slander the deputy chairman of the Mejlis, promising in return release from jail. Both political prisoners rejected this proposal.

During the trial, lawyer Polozov insisted on calling Ablaev to testify, but the judges refused. Speaking in the debate, Polozov did not rule out that the mufti was one of the secret witnesses for the prosecution.

At the same time, the judges interrogated as witnesses the head of the Crimean occupation administration, Sergei Aksenov, the former speaker of the Verkhovna Rada of the region, and now the illegitimate "state council" Vladimir Konstantinov, and members of the Federation Council from the annexed Crimea, Sergei Tsekov and Olga Kovitidi.

On May 15, the chairman of the Mejlis of the Crimean Tatar people, Refat Chubarov, expelled from Crimea and living in Kyiv, announced his readiness to arrive on the peninsula to testify in the case of Chiygoz. Although at least two criminal cases have been opened against Chubarov in Crimea, Part 4 of Article 456 of the Russian Code of Criminal Procedure (summoning a witness from outside the Russian Federation) guarantees such witnesses immunity from prosecution and imprisonment. However, Zinkov, Kozyrev and Kryuchkov refused to summon Chubarov to court.