Crimean Tatar Leniie Umerova wrote a new letter from a Russian prison in which she described the entire process of her illegal arrest. The letter was published by her brother, Aziz Umerov, on his Facebook page.
According to her, her father was scheduled for surgery on the second of December, and she was going to come to arrange a surprise. However, on December 3 last year, problems arose while passing the Upper Lars border crossing point.
“At first everything went as usual: documents and luggage were checked, Ukrainian citizens were told to hand over their phones for inspection. Everything that happened next was some kind of endless nightmare, or, if we talk philosophically, a test”,- writes Leniie.
They picked her up and took her to Vladikavkaz, where they said they would ask her a few questions and then put her on the next bus that would go to Crimea.
“They interviewed us until half past one and, citing the fact that it was already very late, they called a taxi to the hotel. They said that I could continue my journey in the morning. On the road I was traveling on, patrol officers stopped me, checked my documents, and I, as a foreign citizen, was asked to show my permission to stay in the region. This is an administrative offense, the fact that I didn’t have one is punished by a fine of several thousand rubles or, in case of repeated cases, by deportation from the country”,- she explains.
At 5 a.m. in the court she was sentenced to deportation, and an hour later she was searched in a prison for foreigners. In such institutions, people are waiting for the diplomatic departments of the two countries to decide how to deport the vperpetrator to their home country, but due to Russian military aggression towards Ukraine, ambivalent relations between them simply do not exist, which is why it is unrealistic to get Umerova out of there .
“My lawyer was still able to get the verdict overturned almost three months later. But I sat there. Dad had a successful operation, by the way. Only the surprise turned out to be as bad as possible”,- she concludes.
We remind you that on December 4, 2022, Russian security forces detained Leniie Umerova after crossing the Georgian-Russian border, allegedly for violating the rules of the security zone. The girl was traveling from Kyiv to the occupied Crimea due to the deterioration of her father’s health condition.
Until March 16, Leniie was held in the Temporary Detention Center for Foreign Citizens near Vladikavkaz. The occupiers found the girl guilty of violating the state border regime (Part 1 of Article 18 of the Code of Administrative Offenses of the Russian Federation) and fined her 2 thousand rubles.
At night on March 16, 2023, Leniie Umerova was released, but she was grabbed, put a bag over her head, brought to an unfamiliar area of Vladikavkaz and left there. The girl was detained again and a report was drawn up against her for disobeying the police. She was sentenced to 15 days of administrative arrest. This was subsequently repeated three times.
On May 5, the Lefortovo court in Moscow arrested the Crimean Tatar Leniie Umerova for 2 months on suspicion of high treason (Article 275 of the Russian Criminal Code).