The verdict of Ruslan Bekirov was confirmed

The Sevastopol city court upheld the verdict under Art. 307 of the Criminal Code (given false testimony).

On April 16, 2021, the Sevastopol City Court upheld the verdict that a lower court handed down to Ruslan Bekirov under Part 1 of Art. 307 of the Criminal Code (given false testimony). On February 15, the Nakhimovsky District Court of Sevastopol found him guilty and sentenced him to 300 hours of compulsory labor.

The initiation of the case became known in June 2020. In October of the same year, it was taken to court. The public prosecutor asked the court to sentence Bekirov to 400 hours of compulsory work.

Bekirov was a witness in the case of Enver Seitosmanov, who was sentenced to 17 years in prison for organizing the activities of a terrorist organization (part 1 of article 205.5 of the Criminal Code) in connection with his involvement in the radical Islamic party Hizb ut-Tahrir. In March 2019, Bekirov testified against Seitosmanov, but at the trial he stated that they were obtained under duress. In a statement sent to the main military investigative department of the Investigative Committee, he said that officers of the Russian Federal Security Service for Crimea and Sevastopol forcibly delivered him to the building of the FSB department from the police department and demanded that he sign evidence against Seitosmanov, incriminating him as a member of Hizb ut-Tahrir. . According to him, after the refusal, the special services began to threaten him with a prison term, a fine, and infection with tuberculosis. He was released only after he agreed to sign a statement.

According to the version of the investigation, with which the court agreed, in reality, Bekirov " in the absence of any moral and physical pressure from the investigator " testified that in January 2015 he heard " Seitosmanov reported that he was a Hizb ." The fact that Bekirov declared in court about pressure from the investigation and that he was not aware of Seitosmanov’s involvement in Hizb ut-Tahrir, according to the FSB, only indicated that he was trying to “help his friend Seitosmanov avoid criminal liability. ” ". The accusation was based on the testimony of a secret witness and expert examinations. Petitions to declassify the identity of the witness, request a billing of Bekirov's phone and interrogate Uzbek citizens detained with him, the court rejected.

We classify Seitosmanov’s sentence as unlawful, since we consider it unreasonable to prosecute members of Hizb ut-Tahrir under “terrorist” articles only on the basis of party activities (holding meetings, reading literature, etc.): this party was not noticed in involvement to terrorism.

Sources

• The court upheld the verdict on the Crimean Tatar in the case of "giving false testimony" // OVD-Info. 2021. April 16.