On Tuesday, the 12th of November, during a so-called court hearing in the so-called Kyiv District Court on the so-called second Simferopol Hizb ut-Tahrir case, the judge warned Alim Karimov to abstain from smiling. This was reported by his wife via her Facebook account.
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"My husband is not allowed to smile! The judge warned him because he was smiling. For the first time in the history of the trials of Crimean Muslims, the person (the defendant) is not allowed to smile! So what should he do? Should we cry ?! Or we will be banned to cry as well?! Vanity fair. He was told that his fate was being decided here while he was sitting and smiling. To which my husband replied that his fate was decided long before this time and it was not for him to decide it!",- the message outcries.
We remind that on the 27th of March, Russian security forces in occupied Crimea carried out mass searches in 26 dwellings of Crimean Tatars. Literature was seized from some activists, which, according to Crimean Solidarity, the security forces planted themselves. In addition to books and brochures, people’s phones, tablets, laptops, passports were confiscated as well. Security officials behaved rudely. It is reported that they used physical force against detainees and entered these very dwellings in shoes. Lawyers who arrived at the site of the searches were not allowed to contact with the detained. According to the results of these actions, 20 people were suspected of their membership in the Hizb ut-Tahrir organization, which was banned in the Russian Federation. On the 28th of March, three more Crimean Tatar activists were detained, in whose homes searches were carried out in their absence. The whereabouts of yet another Crimean Tatar – Edem Iayachikov – remains unknown. On th 27-28th of March, the so-called court arrested all 23 detainees after the searches. A preventive measure in the form of detention was chosen until the 15th of May. Everyone is accused of membership in the Hizb ut-Tahrir organization banned in the Russian Federation. Later, the Ukrainian Parliamentary Commissioner for Human Rights, Liudmyla Denisova, reported that the detainees were assigned to five pre-trial detention centers in the Rostov Region. On the 13-14th of May, courts in the Rostov Region and occupied Crimea extended the period of arrest for all 24 Crimean Tatar detainees until the 15th of August. Then the so-called Kyiv District Court of Simferopol extended the preventive measure in the form of detention until the 15th of August to the Crimean Tatar activist Raim Ayvazov, detained in April at the Kalanchak checkpoint. He was included in the criminal case of 23 other Crimean Tatars detained on the 27th of March 2019.