Well-known Russian lawyer Dmitry Dinze has warned a Crimean court that even under Russian legislation it faces criminal liability for imprisoning people on the basis of overtly rigged evidence. The warning was issued with good cause shortly after Dinze took up the defence of Volodymyr Balukh, a Ukrainian activist in Russian-occupied Crimea arrested days after he hung up a plaque honouring the slain victims of Maidan. Dinze earlier acknowledged, when representing Ukrainian filmmaker Oleg Sentsov, that the defence has very limited scope in Russia’s politically-motivated prosecutions of Ukrainians. It can, nonetheless, help to highlight the flagrant violations of their clients’ rights, and there are certainly multiple infringements in this new ineptly fabricated case.
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Halya Coynash: Russian FSB resorts to flagrant falsification to jail Ukrainian activist in Crimea
Two Crimean Tatars have been jailed Crimea for so-called ‘propaganda of extremism’ after armed and masked men turned up at their homes early on April 13, 2017.
