On February 20, the magistrate in Alushta terminated the administrative case of the imam of the Yukari Jami mosque Yusuf Ashirov on illegal missionary activity (Part 4 of Article 5.26 of the Administrative Code). Crimean Solidarity reports this . The case file is available on the court website.
The judge agreed with the arguments of the defense witnesses that the imam fulfilled his duties from the point of view of religion and responsibility to society, and dismissed the case for lack of evidence of an offense.
It is unknown what exactly caused the administrative case. As Ashirov himself believes, the case is based on a “raider seizure of a mosque.” According to the imam's lawyer Nazim Sheikhmambetov, in November 2023, Ashirov was deliberately detained so that he would not be able to attend prayer at the mosque the next day. Then the security forces brought another imam in his place.
An administrative protocol on illegal missionary activity against the imam was drawn up after the events of November 2023. Then the security forces came to search the houses of Crimean Tatars and members of the Muslim religious community “Alushta”, to which Ashirov himself is related. On November 23, the court arrested the man for two days under the article of petty hooliganism (Part 1 of Article 20.1 of the Administrative Code). The imam allegedly used obscene language when communicating with security forces.
- This is not the first time that the independent religious community Alushta has come under pressure. The chairman of the Alushta community, Lenur Khalilov, and a member of the audit commission, Ruslan Mesutov, were arrested in June 2019 after searches were carried out in the homes of four Crimean Tatars in Alushta. In August 2021, they and two other residents of Alushta were sentenced to long terms in a maximum security colony in the case of involvement in Hizb ut-Tahrir, recognized as a terrorist organization and banned in the Russian Federation. In November 2023, searches were carried out on at least three Crimean Tatars and community members Yusuf Ashirov, Vilen Useinov and Zinur Appazov.
- In June 2021, Imam Yusuf Ashirov was fined five thousand rubles for “illegal missionary activity.”