A court in Russian-occupied Crimea has upheld the 10-day prison sentence passed on 76-year-old Server Karametov for his peaceful picket in defence of Crimean Tatar political prisoner Akhtem Chiygoz. This torture of a frail and elderly man who suffers from several very serious illnesses elicited outrage and revulsion far beyond Crimea, yet ‘judge’ Natalya Anatolyevna Terentyeva from the High Court in Simferopol claimed there no grounds for overturning the jail sentence.
If this is, as lawyer Emil Kurbedinov believes, a new stage in intimidation, it is one that could backfire. As his colleague Edem Semedlyaev noted, it is Server Karametov who has achieved most. Had he been left on August 8 to stand outside the High Court with his placard reading “Putin, Our children are not terrorists!”, his words would have been seen by 20 people at most.
