When a dozen masked men banged on the doors and windows of his house on Saturday morning at around seven o'clock, Nariman Jeljal must have known that he, too, would be fetched.
Jeljal is the last leader of the Crimean Tatar minority who still lives on the peninsula after the annexation of Crimea by Russia.
Shortly before the raid, he reported on Facebook about the kidnapping of his neighbor in a village near the capital Simferopol.
On Saturday the men locked Jeljal's wife and four children in a room and took Jeljal away in a minibus.
The procedure points to the Russian domestic secret service FSB.
Friedrich Schmidt
Political correspondent for Russia and the CIS in Moscow.
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Such actions are called “mask shows”.
The FSB had long had Dscheljal in its sights.
The fact that he struck now is likely to be the revenge for a summit held in Kiev at the end of August with international participation to establish a “Crimean platform” which is supposed to overcome annexation.
The fact that the Crimean Tatars, with the exception of a few representatives who cooperate with Russia, reject the annexation of their homeland is also due to their history, in which the deportation in 1944 in locked freight trains to Central Asia was formative.
Tens of thousands were killed in the process.
Jeljal's fate reflects that of his people: he was born in Uzbekistan in 1980 and was only able to return to Crimea with his family at the end of the 1980s. Since the annexation, the journalist and political scientist on the peninsula has become a conversation partner for those who wanted to get an idea of what was happening. Moscow's propaganda simulates the harmony of a multi-ethnic state; but opponents of the annexation are brutally persecuted. Dozens of Crimean Tatars have been taken to Russian prisons. In August, the human rights organization Memorial counted a total of 89 Crimean residents who were persecuted for membership in a “terrorist organization” and were sentenced to prison terms, some of whom were long.
What is meant here is Hizb ut Tahrir, an Islamist organization that is permitted in Ukraine but prohibited in other countries. Russia's rulers used "every means" to punish insubordinate people, Jeljal told the FAZ in Simferopol in spring 2018. It was not the first raid for him; Jeljal has also been arrested. The Russian rulers classified the Mejlis, the executive branch of the Crimean Tatars, as "extremist" as early as 2016; in the proceedings, Jeljal had represented the Mejlis as the last member remaining in the Crimea. The FSB asked him to say publicly that he was no longer on the committee, Dscheljal reported to the FAZ. So far the rulers have shied away fromto initiate a “mejlis process” and instead tried to discredit the body.
Moscow was unsuccessful with this.
Dscheljal traveled to Prague, Washington and Kiev, for example, and recently took part in the summit on the “Crimean Platform” there.
He advocated the establishment of representations of the Crimean Tatars in the countries participating in the platform, so that it did not stop at lofty words.
Jeljal is hoping for an international solution, for example in the form of a Ukrainian special territory under the patronage of Kiev, Moscow, the EU and Turkey, which acts as an advocate for the Crimean Tatars.
"We remain hostages to the political situation," he said of his people.
Crimean Tartars demonstrate against Jeljal's kidnapping
Dscheljal's fate shared four other Crimean Tatars over the weekend, who were also abducted. Two of them are accused of damaging important infrastructure. They face ten to 15 years imprisonment. What exactly Jeljal is accused of was initially unclear, and it was also not confirmed that he was detained at the FSB headquarters in Simferopol at the weekend, as Mejlis chairman Refat Chubarov, who has meanwhile exiled in Kiev, wanted to know. Numerous Crimean Tatars gathered in front of the FSB building on Saturday. Around 40 of them were arrested, according to the "Crimean Solidarity" movement; Pictures show how they are crammed into a blue public bus.
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Selenskyj and other Ukrainian politicians described the new wave of persecution as Russia's reaction to the fact that the "Crimean Platform" had started its work. The Ukrainian Foreign Minister Dmytro Kuleba called on the partners to increase the pressure on Moscow.