A court in Crimea sentenced four defendants in the Tablighi Jamaat case

Judge of the Supreme Court of Crimea Sergei Pogrebnyak announced the verdict to four defendants in the Tablighi Jamaat case - Renat Suleymanov, Talat Abdurakhmanov, Seyran Mustafayev and Arsen Kubedinov. Crimean Solidarity reports this.

Renat Suleymanov was found guilty under Part 1 of Article 282.2 of the Criminal Code (organization of an extremist community) and sentenced to 4 years in a general regime colony and a year of restriction of freedom. Talyata Abdurakhmanova, Seyran Mustafaeva and Arsen Kubedinova - under Part 2 of Article 282.2 of the Criminal Code (participation in the activities of an extremist community), to 2 and a half years suspended sentence with a limit of one year and a probationary period of two years.

Earlier, at court hearings in the case, the defendants denied their guilt and claimed that they did not have “conversations of an extremist nature” at the meetings. In February 2018, Kubedinov was released on his own recognizance and admitted his guilt. At the pretrial hearing, the court sent Mustafayev under house arrest. Abdurakhmanov and Suleymanov were in pre-trial detention until the verdict.

Kubedinov, Suleymanov, Mustafayev and Abdurakhmanovwere detained on October 2, 2017 in different regions of Crimea. On that day, the regional department of the FSB reported that in Simferopol, as well as the Simferopol and Belogorsk regions of Crimea, several people were detained in connection with an investigation into the activities of cells of the Tablighi Jamaat organization, recognized as extremist.

• The international religious organization Tablighi Jamaat was recognized as extremist in Russia in 2009. According to the SOVA Center, this ban is unlawful, since the association promotes Islam and has not been seen in any calls for violence.