When Nariman Dzhelyal was detained by Russian security forces on 4 September, the Crimean Tatar leader spent the next day “in a basement, in handcuffs and with a bag on his head”, according to his lawyer.
This treatment is, sadly, par for the course since Russia annexed the Ukrainian peninsula in 2014. Since then, the Crimean Tatar community has faced wave upon wave of arrests – often on terrorism and sabotage charges. Dzhelyal, a deputy leader of the Crimean Tatar Meijlis, a representative body that has been banned by Russia, had only recently returned from an international summit devoted to Crimea when he was arrested at his home on Sunday.
The Crimean branch of Russia’s Federal Security Service (FSB) claims that a group including Dzhelyal is responsible for damaging a gas pipeline close to a Russian military base outside the city of Simferopol. Security officials claim that detainees have already confessed, and have published a video to that effect.
