On the morning of February 22, 2024, the occupation security men searched the house of Ms. Lutfiye Zudiyeva, a journalist and CRIMEAN SOLIDARITY activist, in Dzhankoy. When the “investigative actions” were over, Ms. Zudiyeva was detained and taken to the Extremism Counteracting Center. There two protocols were drawn up against her for @abuse of freedom of mass information”.
At 05:50am, a car without license plates drove up to Lutfiye’s house, and four masked security men entered the house, CRIMEAN SOLIDARITY reported.
“Today at 6 o’clock in the morning I was woken up by stamping. After looking at the camera, I understood that these were law enforcement men. They jumped over the fence, opened the gate, and entered the yard. They knocked loudly on the door. I asked to wait because we were dressing. They presented the decision of the Kievskiy District Court that our residence should be examined. But, in fact, they carried out a search, forced us to take out things to examine them,” Mr. Seytasan Chykiyev, the activist’s husband, said.
Lawyer Emil Kurbedinov was not allowed to enter the human rights defender’s house.
The search ended around 8:40am. According to GRATY media, that Ms. Zudiyeva, writes for, the “policemen” seized a dash camera, all mobiles, a laptop and flash drives. In addition, they took away the self-published collection of letters and texts of Nariman Dzhelial, Mejlis Deputy Chairman, “I Am Staying”, as well as a collection of reports by Russian human rights defenders, including own reports by Ms. Zudiyeva about political persecution in Crimea. The search and detention were supervised by Ruslan Shambazov, head of the E Center department. Roman Filatov also participated in the search.
Ms. Zudiyeva was taken to E Center in Simferopol where two reports under RF CoAO Article 13.15 -2 and 2.1 (“Abuse of freedom of mass media”) were drawn up against her.
According to the media, the attention of the occupiers was caught by three posts by Ms. Zudiyeva on her Facebook page. In two of them, referring to the materials of Radio Liberty, she did not mention that this media had been declared a foreign agent in Russia. (The posts referred to the persecution of lawyers in Russia and Belarus in the context of the simultaneous deprivation of legal status of three Crimean lawyers as well as to the verdict of Radio Liberty freelancer Vladyslav Yesypenko).
The third post that attracted the “policemen’s’ attention was about collective prayers of Crimean Muslims for the detained in the case of Hizb-ut-Tahrir Bilohirsk Group. The policemen did not find there a statement that Hizb-ut-Tahrir had been recognized a terrorist organization in Russia.
Lutfiye Zudiyeva is an activist of CRIMEAN SOLIDARITY civic association, a journalist and human rights defender. She is the mother of four children, two of whom are minors.
Lutfiye Zudiyeva has been repeatedly persecuted for her professional activities. In July 2023, she was detained on charges of “participating in a mass simultaneous presence of citizens in a public place for the purpose of further media coverage.” Then the woman came to Simferopol to cover the court hearing in the case of Nariman Dzhelial, Deputy Chairman of the Mejlis, and the Akhtemov brothers, accused of sabotage. Then she was fined RUR12,000.
