On Friday, October 13, the Kyiv district court of occupied Simferopol arrested lawyer Aleksey Ladin for 14 days and fined him 45 thousand rubles.
The lawyers accused him of displaying prohibited symbols in a Facebook post. Aleksey Ladin published a drawing of the Ukrainian coat of arms and Crimean Tatar tamga.
The Crimean Tatar Resource Center strongly condemns these illegal actions of the Russian security forces.
Harassment, pressure and obstruction of the activities of an independent lawyer is a violation of both Ukrainian and Russian legislation on the practice of lawyers, as well as the Basic Principles on the Role of Lawyers adopted by the UN in 1990. These principles impose a duty on governments not to subject lawyers to prosecution or to judicial, administrative, economic or other sanctions for any action taken in accordance with recognized professional duties, standards and ethics, or the threat of such prosecution and sanctions.
The Crimean Tatar Resource Center demands the immediate release of lawyer Aleksey Ladin and to refrain from further persecution of independent lawyers carrying out professional activities in the territory of temporarily occupied Crimea, as well as lawyers acting in the interests of political prisoners of Crimea in Russia.
The Crimean Tatar Resource Center calls on the international community to increase pressure on the Russian Federation and the occupation authorities of Crimea in order to stop political persecution and persecution in connection with the professional activities of lawyers, as well as to apply personal sanctions against persons involved in human rights violations in the temporarily occupied territories of Ukraine.