Prisoner Zeitullaev refused to testify against a defendant in the Hizb ut-Tahrir case

Crimean Tatar Ruslan Zeytullayev, sentenced to 15 years in prison in the Sevastopol Hizb ut-Tahrir case, refused to testify against Enver Seytosmanov, a new defendant in this case. Journalist Anton Naumlyuk writes about this on Facebook.

According to his information, FSB officers came to Zeitullaev at IK-2 in the city of Salavat in Bashkortostan and demanded that the Crimean citizen testify against Seytosmanov. Otherwise, they threatened to open a criminal case for refusing to testify against Zeitullaev himself.

The prisoner refused their demands, citing Article 51 of the Constitution. After this, they invited witnesses who recorded his answer. Zeitullayev did not sign the protocol.

Naumlyuk notes that there was no lawyer present, only “local FSB officers carrying out instructions from their Crimean colleagues.”

In his message, the journalist cites the commentary of lawyer Emil Kurbedinov:

Seytosmanov is accused of belonging to the Hizb ut-Tahrir party, banned in Russia. According to investigators, he was a member of the “Sevastopol cell,” but his case was separated into separate proceedings. The prosecution insisted that the creator of the cell was Zeytullayev (which was not confirmed during the first trial in the North Caucasus Military District Court), therefore the testimony against Seytosmanov indirectly concerns Zeytullayev himself and the others convicted in this case: Rustem Vaitov, Ferat Sayfullaev and Nuri Primova. Despite the investigator’s threats and refusal to testify with reference to Article 51, he is legally completely justified.

• Enver Seytosmanov was arrested in May after searches in the village of Orlinoye, Balaklava district of Sevastopol.
• Zeytullayev was arrested in January 2015. He and three other residents of Sevastopol were also accused of involvement in Hizb ut-Tahrir.
• The investigation considered Zeitullaev to be the leader of the cell, but the North Caucasus District Military Court initially tried him as a participant and sentenced him in September 2016 to seven years in a general regime colony (the other three to five).
• The prosecutor's office appealed Zeitullaev's sentence, and in April 2017, the North Caucasus District Military Court sentenced him as an organizer to 12 years in a maximum security colony.
• The state prosecution considered that this was a lenient punishment, and in July 2017, the Supreme Court, in response to a request from the prosecutor's office to tighten the sentence, added another three years in prison to Zeitullayev.
• Seytosmanov and Zeytullaev are included in the “Sentsov list” - a list of political prisoners whose release the convicted director demands. OVD-Info has collected known information about 88 people associated with Ukraine and persecuted by Russian authorities. Among these people there are both those deprived of liberty and those sentenced to suspended sentences, which means their movements are limited.