In effect, the criminal cases against Hizb ut-Tahrir are based on “thought crimes”. The investigation does not need to prove whether the defendants prepared or even considered a carrying out a terrorist act - it’s enough to call them adherents to the ideology of Hizb ut-Tahrir.

But the FSB in Crimea often has difficulty doing so. The whole array of evidence for each group of defendants consists of insubstantial, according to the defence, forensic psycho-linguistic and religious analyses. These forensic analyses are carried out by “friendly” experts, who examine secret video footage of defendants talking about political and religious themes from the point of view of Islam. The evidence also includes testimony from several secret witnesses, whom defendants recognise as people wishing them harm or people scared by the security services. Finally, the evidence includes Islamic literature and notes confiscated during house searches - the majority of these materials are not banned and prove nothing but the faith of their owners.

“The investigation claims that Hizb ut-Tahrir’s aim is to bring a world Caliphate to power by recruiting supporters,” says Alexey Ladin, who represents Yalta human rights defender Emir-Usein Kuku. “According to the investigation, when a district has more than 50% of [Hizb ut-Tahrir] supporters, they move to the second stage of their mission: taking power by a peaceful or violent methods. A group of six people [defendants in the Yalta Hizb ut-Tahrir case], who were under surveillance by the security services for half a year, recruited three people, according to the investigation.

“Rough calculations put Crimea’s population at two million people. In order to try and overthrow the authorities, they would need to recruit a million people. How long would it take even all four groups of defendants to recruit this number of people on the peninsula? But whatever the security services dream up, the courts will still consider their conclusions lawful and justified.”

The North Caucasus Military Court in Rostov-on-Don - the only court that examines terrorism cases in Crimea - has shown a skeptical attitude towards this evidence presented by the Crimean FSB. The judges initially sentenced four defendants from the Sevastopol Hizb ut-Tahrir case to the minimum sentences permitted, and requested that the investigation conduct further investigations of evidence presented for two other groups of defendants. According to lawyer Edem Semedlayev, the court “doesn’t know how to make [this evidence] into a sentence.”

“It’s obvious that they [the judges] looked at this mountain of falsifications and decided to free themselves of such a dirty case,” another lawyer commented on the Yalta case.

Targeting solidarity

Lawyers and Crimean Tatars call these most recent searches and detentions an attempt to destroy Crimean Solidarity - an organisation of relatives of political prisoners, activists and lawyers in Crimea. It was formed in April 2016 in order to support the families of defendants - both in terms of covering the cases and raising funds. For three years running, Crimean Solidarity has held monthly meetings where participants discuss the latest news from the trials of political prisoners, the needs of their families, activities for the children of prisoners, and strategies for informing their audience about the situation in Crimea.

Most people detained on 27 March are activists who have been live-streaming house searches for years, holding solitary pickets, helping the families of detainees, attending court hearings for political prisoners and organising supplies for them in pre-trial detention.

Several of those recently arrested have long come to the fore because of systematic pressure from the security services. For instance, Remzi Bekirov, an activist with Crimean Solidarity, has been sentenced to administrative arrest twice for “participating in an unsanctioned public meeting” (standing outside the house of activist Marlen Mustafayev during a house search) and “distributing extremist materials” (for two video clips saved on VKontakte in 2009-2010). Activist Riza Izetov has been detained three times, and his house was searched in 2017, but he has also previously been sentenced to administrative arrest for “participating in an unsanctioned public meeting” (supporting activist Marlen Mustafayev during a house search). Another activist, Ruslan Suleimanov, has also been sentenced twice on administrative charges.