During the period of occupation, 6 Crimean lawyers were harassed by Russian occupiers in the temporarily occupied Crimea. Among them: Lilia Hemedzhi, Rustem Kiamilev, Nazim Sheikhmambetov, Edem Semedliaiev, Ayder Azamatov and Emine Avamileva.
We remind you that the Russian-controlled Chamber of Lawyers of Crimea canceled the licenses of lawyers Lilia Hemedzhi and Rustem Kiamilev. We also note that in August 2022, the Bar Association of the Chechen Republic Nizam deprived Nazim Sheikhmambetov, Lilia Hemedzhi and Rustem Kiamilev of their professional status.
We also remind you that in May 2022, employees of the Center for Combating Extremism detained lawyer Edem Semedliaiev in occupied Simferopol, allegedly for posting on a social network, although in fact the lawyer himself did not publish anything, but was mentioned in a post by another person. Edem Semedliaiev fined him 75 thousand. rubles. Moreover, his lawyer, lawyer Nazim Sheikhmambetov, was detained, to whom the occupiers appointed 6 days of administrative arrest. After that, lawyers Ayder Azamatov and Emine Avamileva, who arrived at the court to defend their colleague, lawyer Nazim Sheikhmambetov, were detained. The Central District Court of the occupied Simferopol decided to impose an administrative arrest on lawyer Ayder Azamatov for 8 days, and on lawyer Emine Avamileva for 5 days.
Recall that this is not the first case of impeding the professional activities of Crimean lawyers. In 2021, lawyer Edem Semedliaiev was arrested for 12 days and fined 4,000 rubles for refusing to stop open audio recording at the request of Ruslan Shambazov, head of the CPE department, and to remove all clothes to check his body for extremist tattoos.
In addition, in 2018, in the so-called Kievsky District “Court” of Simferopol, lawyer Emil Kurbedinov was sentenced to 10 days of administrative arrest for allegedly extremist messages on VK in 2013. Also, the occupants conducted searches in his office and seized equipment.
The CTRC notes that harassment of the activities of Crimean lawyers is a common thing for the occupiers. It should be noted that principals suffer from this, because lawyers cannot defend them in criminal cases, represent them in courts and during preliminary investigations, and they are also deprived of the right to take an exam to obtain a lawyer’s status during the year.
The Crimean Tatar Resource Center strongly condemns these illegal actions of the Russian security forces, which are a manifestation of the discriminatory policy of the occupation authorities in relation to the indigenous Crimean Tatar people, since all lawyers are representatives of the indigenous Crimean Tatar people, and also actively protect the rights of political prisoners of Crimea, mainly Crimean Tatars.
The Crimean Tatar Resource Center demands the immediate renewal of the rights to carry out professional activities and refrain from further persecution of independent lawyers carrying out professional activities on the territory of the temporarily occupied Crimea, as well as lawyers acting in the interests of political prisoners of Crimea on the territory of Russia.