One more civic journalist detained by the Russians in Crimea

Amidst the full-scale war, the Russians continue to persecute civic journalists in the temporarily occupied Crimea for political reasons. At 4 am on August 11, the occupiers conducted mass search warrants and detentions of Crimean Tatar activists. Among them there was Vilen Temeryanov, a civic journalist and correspondent of the Grani.ru media. The next day, he was arrested for two months by the so-called ‘Kyiv district court’ on suspicion of participation in the international Islamic organization Hizb ut-Tahrir. The show trial was conducted in closed mode.

Apart from Temeryanov, five more Crimean Tatar activists had been arrested that day, namely Enver Krosh, Murat Mustafaiev, Edem Bekirov, Rinat Aliev and Seityai Abbozov. They are all accused of participation in the Hizb-ut Tahrir. During the transportation to Simferopol, the FSB officers had beaten and tortured Enver Krosh, demanding the password to unlock his phone. Vilen Temeryanov informed that he had been deprived of food and water for the entire day. 

Vilen Temeryanov’s wife Elmaz said that the occupiers had tried to plant a book to them during the search warrant:

"My attention was caught by one of the officers: it seemed to me that he had a book under his t-shirt. Vilen requested the detective that his subordinate pulled up his t-shirt so we could see that there was nothing underneath. The detective turned red with fury and went mad: why, allegedly, should his colleague pull up his clothes.

Apart from Temeryanov’s house, the occupiers conducted a search warrant at his mother’s home and planted books to her as well. Elmaz Temeryanova says:

"They planted two books at my mother-in-law’s kitchen, on her cereals shelf. One book was entitled ‘Caliphate’ in capital letters, and the other one looked like a thin brochure. Both books were white and seemed absolutely intact. Besides, there was no one in the kitchen while they had been searching there."

The lawyer and human rights advocate Lutfiye Zudiyeva says that the occupiers had repeatedly persecuted Vilen Temeryanov for his journalistic activity before:

Vilen had been administratively persecuted for several times, he had administrative cases instituted against him. He had paid his fines and been sentenced to administrative detentions.

On November 23, 2021, Vilen Temeryanov was detained while carrying out an editorial task on covering the meeting of the lawyer Edem Semedliaiev who had just been released from custody. Temeryanov was arrested for 14 days. On November 3, 2020, he was detained at the so-called ‘Crimean Garrison Military Court’ where he had been covering the politically motivated case of the Krasnogvardeyskaya group of the Hizb-ut Tahrir.