Russian court cancels Lutfie Zudieva’s fine

A Russian court in Krasnodar has cancelled the fine imposed on Crimean Tatar journalist Lutfie Zudieva for a social media post mentioning Radio Liberty without identifying the media outlet as a ‘foreign agent’.

This was reported by the publication ‘Graty’ on 18 July.

As it is noted, the court ruled that the law enforcers had no right to draw up a report on the offence, because according to the legislation of the Russian Federation, namely paragraphs 1 and 58 of part 2 of article 28.3 of the Code of Administrative Offences of Russia, only the Federal Service for Supervision in the Sphere of Communications, Information Technologies and Mass Media – Roskomnadzor – has such powers.

We shall remind you that Lutfie Zudieva is an activist of the Crimean Solidarity and a journalist of the publication ‘Graty’. She covers trials and human rights violations in occupied Crimea.

Zudieva was detained in 2019 for a social media publication. Then the activist paid a fine of 2 thousand rubles for allegedly publishing ‘extremist symbols’.

In the morning of 22 February, occupation law enforcement officers searched Lutfie Zudieva’s house. After that, the activist was taken to the ‘Centre for Countering Extremism’. The Crimean Tatar was released after three hours, having drawn up two administrative protocols for ‘abuse of freedom of mass information’ for the posts on her personal Facebook page. In two of them, Zudieva mentioned Radio Liberty and failed to mention that the editorial board was recognised as a ‘foreign agent’ in Russia.

In March, the occupation Kyiv district court in Simferopol fined the human rights activist 2,500 rubles under the part ‘Abuse of freedom of mass information’.