Criminal case for «separatism» is filed against another Crimean Tatar in Crimea

This week investigators questioned four activists from the Ukrainian Cultural Center (UCC) in the Federal Security Service of the Russian Federation office in the occupied Crimea. As it turned out later, the invaders were interested in any information about the Crimean Tatar Veldar Shukurdzhiev who is one of the founders of the UCC in Crimea and currently resides on the mainland of Ukraine.

As the newspaper «Krimskaya svitlitsya» wrote on Facebook, on March 20, 2017, the security officials made a search in Shukurdzhiyev's parents’ house in Simferopol.

Armed people in uniform broke into the house at 7.00 a.m. They confiscated during the search some documents and literature.

«Special services should know for sure that Veldar Shukurdzhiev was not at home and in Crimea in particular», «Krimskaya svitlitsya» noted.

A newsblog «Krym.Realia» says that Shukurdzhiev is accused of his calls for separatism in Crimea. The reason was an interview on a radio of the Crimean Tatar who spoke about the events in 2014 when Russia annexed Crimea. The radio program was released within the cooperation framework of the Ukrainian radio and website «Voice of Crimea».

«They asked questions about Veldar, his activities before «the Crimean spring» had come and afterwards, his political views, the social network, about his family, parent and interviews and publications in the Ukrainian media. They were interested in his acquaintance with Andrey and Lyudmila Shchekun», Leonid Kuzmin, an activist of the UCC, told.

«They performed this interview with Veldar as evidence. The radio host is Lyudmila Shchekun. As I understand they will interrogate within this criminal case other people from the social network of Veldar Shukurdzhiyev not only the Ukrainian Cultural Center activists. The story will evidently be continued», Kuzmin explained.

As «15 minutes» reported, four activists of the Ukrainian Cultural Center in Crimea, Leonid Kuzmin, Mikhail Batraka, Galina Balaban and Alena Popova, were called for questioning to the Crimean department of the FSS in Simferopol to Franco Boulevard, 13.

The FSS investigator Chumakov said that Ukrainians were witnesses in the criminal case for separatism one of the organizers of the Ukrainian Cultural Center, Veldar Shukurdzhiev, in Crimea.

According to the human rights activists, the FSS investigator provided psychological pressure during interrogations against the Ukrainian activists.

In addition the investigator was interested in other activists in particular the leader of the movement «Euromaidan-Crimea» Andrey Shchekun and the Crimean journalist, Lyudmila Schekun.