The Baymaksky District Court sentenced Bashkir activist and ex-leader of the Bashkort movement Fail Alsynov to four years in a general regime colony under the article of inciting hatred or enmity (Part 1 of Article 282 of the Criminal Code). This was reported by the telegram channel “Once Upon a Time in Bashkiria”.
The prosecutorasked Alsynova for four years in a penal colony, meaning the court handed down a more severe sentence. According to RusNews, several thousand people gathered near the courthouse in Baymak. After the verdict was pronounced, arrests and clashes between Alsynov’s supporters and security forces began .
Alsynov is being persecuted because of his speech in the Bashkir language at the April gathering of residents of the Baymaksky district against gold miners, a recording of which, according to law enforcement officers, he later published on the Internet. According to the prosecution, the activist “negatively assessed” the groups of people “residents of the North Caucasus or Central Asia”, “Armenians”. The man explained that the security forces “didn’t like” his statement about “migrants who come to the republic and engage here, among other things, in illegal mining.”
At the end of October 2023, Alsynov said that his friends and acquaintances began to receive threats due to reposts of the activist’s publications. The day before, in Bashkiria, FSB officers detained activists and defenders of Kushtau who supported Alsynov.
Previously, Alsynov had already been brought to administrative responsibility under the article on inciting hatred or enmity (Article 20.3.1 of the Administrative Code). According to investigators, the activist “did not draw the proper conclusions for himself and again committed actions against the foundations of the constitutional order and the security of the state.” A criminal case was opened after a letter from the head of the Republic of Bashkortostan, Radiy Khabirov, to the Investigative Committee demanding that the activist be brought to criminal responsibility.
11:18 The Baymaksky district court issued private rulings to the head of the administration and the head of the Russian Ministry of Internal Affairs for the Baymaksky district due to the lack of preventive work on countering extremism. Information about this appeared in the telegram channel “United Press Service of the Courts of the Republic of Bashkortostan”.
On January 22, the bank account for collection for the family of Fail Alsynov was blocked, reports “Kushtau Bayram” with reference to the activist’s brother. Alsynov’s relatives have opened a fundraiser to help his large family - the activist has four children, one of whom is an infant. Presumably, the blocking is due to the fact that Alsynov was included in the list of “extremists and terrorists” of Rosfinmonitoring.
- Fail Alsynov is the ex-leader of the national movement “Bashkort,” which was recognized as extremist in Russia and banned in 2020. In December 2022, he was fined under the article on inciting hatred (Article 20.3.1 of the Administrative Code) due to an appeal in which the activist called the mobilization of the Bashkirs “genocide of the Bashkir people.” Then the security forces searched his car and seized his mobile phone. After this, Alsynov was detained and taken to the local FSB department, where a protocol was drawn up under the article on discrediting the army (Part 1 of Article 20.3.3 of the Administrative Code). The reason for this was the same post on social networks about the war in Ukraine.