62-year-old Fazil Ibraimov, who suffers from Type 2 diabetes, has been jailed for five days in Russian-occupied Crimea, after attempting to speak out against building plans which are likely to deprive him and many other Crimean Tatars of their homes. He was alleged to have ‘resisted the police’, the same charge as that used to jail 76-year-old Server Karametov for ten days over a peaceful picket in defence of political prisoners.
The public hearings took place in the premises of the Russian-controlled Simferopol City Council on August 5. They were over plans to build a new residential complex called ‘Crimean Rose’ on the north-eastern outskirts of Simferopol on land which has been occupied by Crimean Tatars since 2005. The clearing in question contains around 100 self-built structures built by Crimean Tatars who had returned to Crimea from exile, but found nobody in a hurry to allocate the land to which they were legally entitled. The territory even has its own mosque with capacity for two thousand people.
