Crimean Tatar Human Rights activist Emir-Usein Kuku and five other Ukrainian Muslims are facing huge sentences on fatally flawed charges with the ‘evidence’ so far provided by a traitor, now working for Russia’s FSB, and an alcoholic ‘secret witness.’ None of this is new for Russia, where such conveyor belt ‘trials’ are wholesale, but the situation in Crimea is different for a number of crucial reasons.

Russia has imprisoned Ukrainian Muslims on Crimean territory which it is occupying illegally. It has no right to apply Russian law in Crimea, and here the charges are of involvement in an organization – Hizb ut-Tahrir – which is legal in Ukraine. All of these factors prompted the renowned Memorial Human Rights Center to declare all six men – Muslim Aliev; Refat Alimov; Inver Bekirov; Arsen Dzhepparov; Emir-Usein Kuku and Vadim Siruk – political prisoners without awaiting the end of the ‘trial’. It does, in any case, consider all those convicted solely of alleged involvement in Hizb ut-Tahrir political prisoners since Russia has provided no grounds for its claim that this is a ‘terrorist’ organization, and it is effectively persecuting Muslims for their faith.

Read more here.