After the occupation of Crimea in 2014, the Russian Federation launched massive repressions against Crimean Tatars and pro-Ukrainian activists on the peninsula. Detentions and arrests of people have become a regular practice.
Moreover, entire families of Crimean Tatars were persecuted. Thus, several family members end up in the dungeons of the FSB on charges of the same fabricated case: father, son and son-in-law. A striking example is the Omerov family, in which all the men – father Enver Omerov, son Riza Omerov and son-in-law Rustem Ismailov – were arrested on trumped-up charges of terrorism, and their daughter and daughter-in-law were prosecuted on administrative charges. Recently they came to search Riza Omerov’s father-in-law.
On October 12, 2016, Russian security forces, as a result of massive searches in the village. In Strohonivka, Simferopol district, five representatives of the indigenous Crimean Tatar people were detained, among whom was 39-year-old Rustem Ismailov. He was accused of participating in the organization Hizb ut-Tahrir, which is banned in the Russian Federation. On June 18, 2019, the North Caucasus District Military Court of the Russian Federation sentenced Rustem Ismailov to 14 years in prison, and on December 24, 2019, the Supreme Court in Moscow reduced the prison term by 6 months, sending Rustem Ismailov to prison for 13 years and 6 months.
His father-in-law, 62-year-old Enver Omerov, was detained on June 10, 2019, at a time when, together with his daughter Ismailova Fatma (wife of political prisoner Rustem Ismailov), he was heading to Rostov-on-Don for a court hearing against his son-in-law, and his 35-year-old Riza Omerov’s year-old son was detained after a search was carried out in his house. Both were also accused of involvement in the organization Hizb ut-Tahrir, banned in the Russian Federation, and on January 11, 2021, the Southern District Military Court of Rostov-on-Don sentenced Enver Omerov to 18 years in prison, and Riza Omerov to 13.
In one moment everything changed. Seven children – Fatma’s three children and her brother Riza’s four children – were left without parents or grandfather. Fatma, her mother Amina and her daughter-in-law Sevilia were left without husbands in the house. Completely unfeminine problems have fallen on their fragile female shoulders, but none of them even admits the thought of leaving Crimea.
Recently, the occupiers came to search the house of the father-in-law of political prisoner Riza Omerov, Amet Bairov.
So, 4 searches, 3 criminal cases, 3 administrative cases? Isn’t it too much repression for one family?
We believe and know that justice will be restored very soon and one day all the prisoners from this family will definitely return home and the whole family will have a huge holiday, and the occupiers will be responsible for the persecution and repression committed against each member of the family.