On July 18, the FSB announced the detention of a citizen of Ukraine in the village of Chervone, Henichesk District, who was accused of serving in the Noman Chelebidzhykhan Crimean Tatar Battalion.
The occupiers reported that in “2016, the detainee had voluntarily joined the Crimean Tatar battalion named after Noman Chelebidzhykhan. The purpose of the battalion was the food, energy and water blockades of Crimea as well as the struggle for returning the peninsula to Ukraine.”
The occupiers opened a criminal case under the Criminal Code of the Russian Federation, Article 208-2 (“service in an illegal armed formation”), that might be punished with a 15-years’ sentence.
The occupiers do not disclose the name and surname of the illegally detained Ukrainian citizen, but Genichesk ua readers recognized him and sent information to the chatbot.
“The person in the video disseminated by the Rashists is Seydali Smayilov, born on April 13, 1968. Before the occupation, he was engaged in transporting the passengers, he has a disability pension because he lost one leg. Russian FSB officers took the disabled man to the basement, where they tortured him with electric shocks, beat him, knocked out his teeth and forced him to say on camera that he had helped the “battalion named after Noman Chelebidzhykhan”, Genichesk ua writes.
The Crimean Human Rights Group reminds that persecuting persons who are criminals under the Ukrainian laws violates Article 7 of the European Convention on Human Rights (no penalty without law) since pursuant to the international humanitarian law the Russian Federation shall not enforce its criminal laws in the temporarily occupied territory.
