International human rights organization Amnesty International demanded Russia to release the Deputy Chairman of the Mejlis of the Crimean Tatar People Ilmi Umerov, who is being held in a psychiatric hospital in Simferopol, and stop criminal proceedings against him.
"The forced confinement that is based merely on suspicions of a person's mental illness is unlawful and runs contrary to international legal norms and standards. Such measures are applied in extreme cases: to protect the individual or other people. meanwhile, we know that there is still no evidence that lmi Umerov is a threat to himself or others .The forced psychiatric treatment, of which Ilmi Umerov is subject of, is nothing more than a repression of his political activities," the director of Amnesty International in Ukraine, Oksana Pokalchuk, said in a statement released on .
Ilmi Umerov was arrested by de-facto Crimean authorities in Simferopol on May 12. An hour before the arrest, he published on his Facebook a post about the detentions of Crimean Tatars in Bakhchisarai by Russian security forces on alleged involvement with the organization Hizb ut-Tahrir The case against Umerov is based on video recordings of his speeches in Kyiv in 19 March 2016. Umerov has repeatedly stated that Russia must pull out from Crimea.
On August 18 he was forcibly detained and transferred from the cardiology department of a Simferopol hospitals to a psychiatric hospital in the same city. The forced psychiatric examination may take 28 days.
On 21 August, Umerov's daughter reported that his health has sharply deteriorated.