Lawyer: Crimean human rights activist Abdureshit Dzhepparov was placed under administrative arrest after a search

In the morning, FSB officers came to search the home of Crimean human rights activist Abdureshit Dzhepparov in Belogorsk. He was taken from there. Acquaintances and lawyers did not know about his whereabouts all day, writes the Crimean Solidarity association, which covers the persecution of Crimean Tatars on the peninsula.

According to Dzhepparov’s wife Niyara Abduraimova, security forces with machine guns “broke into their bedroom” at about 06:45, while the couple and their 14-year-old daughter were sleeping, and took the man away. “Everyone was looking under the sofa. They didn’t say what they were looking for. We looked through the books, seized some - they are missing <…> They checked all the cabinets, took everything out,” she said.

From there, the 63-year-old human rights activist was taken to Simferopol. According to lawyer Edem Semedlyaev, an investigator from the regional department of the FSB confirmed to them during the day that Dzhepparov was brought to their attention, but then he was handed over to the police. The Ministry of Internal Affairs, which the defense lawyers visited, subsequently did not say where the man was.

In the evening, employees of the special detention center on Pavlenko Street, where those arrested on administrative cases are serving their sentences, clarified to Semedlyaev that Dzhepparov was with them. The special detention center is located in the building of police department No. 1 “Zheleznodorozhny”.

The lawyers in the special detention center were not told the details and the deadline set by the court, citing the end of the working day. According to Crimean Solidarity, a report was drawn up against Dzhepparov under the article on “disobedience to the police” (19.3 of the Administrative Code).

The next day, April 26, lawyer Edem Semedlyaev visited Dzhepparov in the special detention center and found out that the Belogorsky District Court of Crimea had arrested him for 12 days. “According to the security forces, during the searches the man allegedly snatched their laptop, which the operatives tried to take away. Dzhepparov believes that these are far-fetched accusations,” clarified . Crimean Solidarity

Dzhepparov, as wrote Crimea.Realities , is a veteran of the Crimean Tatar national movement. In 2014, he and other human rights activists founded the Crimean Contact Group for Human Rights, which monitored the detentions and abductions of opponents of the annexation of the peninsula. The group stopped working after the arrest of its head, Emir-Usein Kuku.

Dzhepparov, as noted by the newspaper “Grati”, then participated in the work of “Crimean Solidarity”, which existed since 2016, and gave comments to journalists about persecution in Crimea.

In March 2022, a search was carried out at Dzhepparov’s house, formalized as an “inspection of the premises.” Afterwards, the human rights activist was arrested for 15 days due to the fact that on his Facebook page there was an excerpt from a program by presenter Seva Novgorodtsev on the BBC about Soviet composers borrowing music from the marches of the Third Reich (Part 1 of Article 20.3 of the Administrative Code).

Updated 27.04 at 13:28 . Information has been added about the protocol drawn up against the human rights activist and the punishment imposed on him.