The court approved the arrest of the defendants in the “Vedjie Kashka case”

The Supreme Court of Crimea left under arrest the defendants in the “case of Vedzhie Kashka” - Bekir Degermendzhi, Asan Chapukh, Kazin Ametov and Ruslan Trubach. This is stated on the Facebook of "Crimean Solidarity".

The judge rejected the appeal of the defense, but reduced the term of detention of the Crimean Tatars by one day, until September 14, 2018.

The defendants were present at the hearing via video link, together with their lawyer Edem Semedlyaev. They repeatedly drew attention to the poor quality of communication, because of this, the defense lawyer filed a petition for the defendants to be present in the courtroom.

The judge dismissed the motion, citing the fact that the lawyer did not provide him with copies of the appeals.

Asan Chapukh was unable to attend the meeting due to poor health. His lawyer Alexander Lesovoy questioned the diagnosis made by the paramedic. He suggested that Chapukh may have a hypertensive crisis. Lesovoy petitioned to postpone the meeting, but the judge rejected it.

The defense asked to transfer the accused to house arrest, drawing the attention of the court to the poor health of their clients, as well as to the fact that they could not be provided with qualified medical care in the pre-trial detention center.

During the meeting, lawyer Taras Omelchenko said that the defendants' long stay in the isolation ward was due to the lack of arguments that they had committed a crime.

Earlier it became known that Chapukh suffered a microstroke in the pre-trial detention center, and Degermendzhi suffered from chronic asthma.

• Bekir Degermendzhi, Asan Chapukh, Kazin Ametov and Ruslan Trubach are accused of extortion: according to investigators, they extorted a large sum of money from Turkish citizen Yusuf Aitan. Their supporters claim that Aitan actually stole $7,000 from the family of 83-year-old Vedzhie Kashka, a veteran of the Crimean Tatar liberation movement, and the defendants tried to force him to return them.
• On the same day as the four accused, they tried to detain Vedzhie Kashka herself. She became ill, the woman was taken to the hospital, after which it became known that she had died .
• Degermendzhi, Chapukh, Ametov and Trubach are included in the "Sentsov's list" - a list of political prisoners whose release the convicted director demands. OVD-Info collected known information about 88 people associated with Ukraine and persecuted by the Russian authorities. Among these people there are both those deprived of liberty and those sentenced to suspended sentences, which means that they have limited movement.