Moscow court detains Crimean Tatar Umerova on suspicion of "espionage"

The Lefortovo District Court of Moscow has arrested 25-year-old Crimean Tatar Leniye Umerova on suspicion of espionage. Umerova was detained last year at the border with Georgia while trying to get to occupied Crimea to visit her sick father.

Source: The Lefortovo District Court of Moscow; Lutfiye Zudiyeva, Crimean Solidarity representative

Quote from Zudiyeva: "During these nine years, I have had to deal with very controversial materials in criminal cases. In some cases, my mind was confused from the first pages of the indictment. But the suspicion of 25-year-old Leniye Umerova, who was going to Crimea to visit her father, who was suffering from cancer, is an extraordinary event. Just now, the Lefortovo District Court of Moscow arrested her for two months."

Details: The decision to arrest was announced by Sergei Ryabtsev, the judge of the Lefortovo District Court of Moscow.

According to Zudiyeva, in July 2020, he arrested Ivan Safronov, the former Kommersant and Vedomosti media journalist.

Background:

• The day before, employees of the FSB of the Russian Federation took the Crimean woman in an unknown direction from the temporary detention centre of the Ministry of Internal Affairs of Russia to Vladikavkaz. On 1 May, the FSB of the Republic of North Ossetia-Alania seized her documents.
• Last December, 25-year-old Leniye Umerova had to leave Kyiv for Crimea because her father suffers from cancer. Russian security forces detained her after crossing the Georgian-Russian border for allegedly violating the rules of the security zone.

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