On September 19, an immigration court in Louisiana granted Baymak protest participant Zagir Mukhamedyarov the status of “withholding of removal” and allowed him to remain in the United States. This was reported by Idel.Realii with reference to Mukhamedyarov and his acquaintances.
“This is one of the forms of political protection of refugees in the United States, along with the provision of political asylum,” the publication quotes a comment from Mukhamedyarov’s friend. “A person with this status cannot be expelled from America because the court has decided that he faces unlawful prosecution in his own country.” Zagir will now be able to legally stay in the United States - live, study, work.”
The interlocutor of Idel.Realii noted that the American prosecutor's office has 30 days to appeal the court. If this does not happen, he should be released from immigration prison in the next few days. He will have to be given a social security number.
Zagir Mukhamedyarov, 27, left Russia in March this year due to fears of detention and arrest in connection with protests in Baymak. He made this decision after security forces came to his relatives’ home. They were told that Mukhamedyarov was wanted on criminal charges.
Initially, the young man flew to Turkey, from there to Cuba and then to Mexico. After that, he illegally crossed the US border, where he was placed in an immigration prison. He asked for political asylum, but because he crossed the border illegally, he was given “refusal deportation” status.
“In general, both the judge and the prosecutor were on my side,” Mukhamedyarov told reporters. — When I talked about what happened in January Baymak, at one moment I could not hold back my tears, remembering those events; it even made it into the minutes of the meeting. But now that's behind us. Now I just have to wait for my release and then decide what I will do next.”
At the beginning of September, Idel.Realii published a long interview with Zagir Mukhamedyarov from a US immigration prison. He spoke in detail about his participation in the rally in support of Fail Alsynov and about his escape from Russia.
- Fail Alsynov is a Bashkir activist and ex-leader of the Bashkort movement, who was sentenced to four years in prison for speaking at a national gathering. There are three known large rallies that took place in January in support of Alsynov: January 15 and 17 in Baymak , January 19 in Ufa .
- Immediately after the action on January 17, a series of administrative cases followed, in which several hundred people were involved, and a criminal case was opened for mass riots: at least 69 defendants were sent to pre-trial detention. At least one of them, Dim Davletkildin, was severely beaten . Rifat Dautov, detained as part of a criminal case, died after detention; his relatives were not told the cause of death and were not given a conclusion. Minniyar Bayguskarov, who took part in the protests, committed suicide due to pressure from the security forces. OVD-Info talked about how security forces persecute residents of Bashkortostan here .