A Russia-controlled court in Simferopol has found Ilmi Umerov, a deputy head of the Crimean Tatar self-styled government, Majlis, guilty of separatism and sentenced him to two years in penal colony, lawyer Mark Feygin has said.
Prosecutors asked the court to give him a suspended 40-month sentence. Thus, the court issued a tougher sentence than the prosecutors demanded.
The Russian authorities detained Umerov in Simferopol on 12 May 2016. An hour before his detention, he said on Facebook that Russian uniformed agencies had detained several Crimean Tatars in Bakhchysaray on suspicion of involvement with the pan-Islamist political organisation Hizb ut-Tahrir, which is banned in Russia.
The case against Umerov was built on the video recording of his speech in Kyiv on 19 March 2016 in which he repeatedly said that Russia must pull out of Crimea.