During a meeting of the OSCE Permanent Council in Vienna, US Ambassador James Gilmore said the United States denounce #Russia’s decision to detain & bring criminal charges against Crimean Tatar Ruslan Bekirov for retracting coerced testimony.
"Rather than investigate Bekirov’s credible allegations that the FSB abused and threatened him into signing the document, authorities have instead charged Bekirov with “making false statements.” These are not steps that are consistent with a bright Russian future, but instead harken back to the old methods of the past, which are a source of such great concern to your colleagues, friends, and fellow country members here at OSCE, when looking to the future, and not to the behaviors of the past", -the message said.
We remind that on June 11, Russian security forces in the village of Orlyne in the occupied Crimea detained the Crimean Tatar Ruslan Bekirov. A so-called case under Part 1 of Article 307 of the Criminal Code (“False testimony”) was instituted against him and and later he was released from the FSB building on his own recognizance.