THE NATIONAL UNION OF
JOURNALISTS OF UKRAINE
Crimean prisoner of conscience Server Mustafaev was born in the urban-type village of Ziadin, Samarkand Oblast, Uzbekistan, in May 1986. He returned to Crimea, Bakhchysarai, and his parents’ family when he was young. Server started studying in Crimea. In 2002, he graduated from school and entered the Bakhchysarai Construction Technical School at the National Agrarian University. In 2006, he graduated with a red diploma as a specialist in equipment and gas supply systems operation. From 2006 to 2012, he studied at the Kyiv National University and obtained a master’s degree in heating, gas supply, and ventilation. He worked at the Yevroset company in Crimea and Kyiv, later at the Astellit company, later as a manager at the Krymopt company, and from 2014 to 2018, a managing partner of the Dolce chain of bakeries.
In 2009, Server got married. He has four children – two sons and two daughters. Server Mustafaev was active in public activities in Bakhchysarai: he organized children’s parties and public events and helped low-income families.
Since 2014, Server began actively helping Crimean families deprived of breadwinners and protectors due to repression. He was one of the organizers and became one of the coordinators of the public association Crimean Solidarity, whose activities aim to provide legal, material, and informational assistance to the families of political prisoners of Crimea and kidnapped Muslims. Since 2014, Server Mustafaev has been engaged in systematic monitoring of the situation in Crimea and covered politically biased trials in the media.
In the city of Sudak, on January 27, 2018, employees of the russian riot police interrupted a meeting of the Crimean Solidarity non-governmental organization attended by Server Mustafaev. Police officers kept the participants in the premises for about seven hours and took personal data in writing, making it a condition for leaving the building.
On May 21, 2018, at around 7 a.m., masked police officers broke into Server Mustafaev‘s home in Bakhchysarai and conducted a search that lasted for about three hours. Documents and electronic devices were seized. During the search, Server Mustafaev was not allowed to contact the lawyer. He was arrested and brought to the FSB for questioning.
On May 21, 2018, after searches, security forces arrested Server Mustafaev and Edem Smayilov. On September 16, 2020, Server Mustafaev was sentenced to 14 years in prison at the Southern District Military Court in Rostov-on-Don. On March 14, the Appellate Military Court in the city of Vlasikha near Moscow almost completely rejected the defense’s complaints and upheld the verdict. He was charged with involvement in the activities of the Hizb ut-Tahrir party, banned in russia, in Crimea.
On July 18, 2019, the European Parliament adopted a resolution calling on russia to release all Ukrainian political prisoners, including those involved in this criminal case.
The Memorial Human Rights Center recognized the participants of the second Bakhchysarai group of the Hizb ut-Tahrir case as political prisoners and demanded their immediate release.
International organizations Amnesty International and FrontLine Defenders came to the defense of Server Mustafaev.
The Islamic political party Hizb ut-Tahrir was recognized by the supreme court of the russian federation as a “terrorist organization” in 2003. Human rights defenders believe that this decision was made unfoundedly, in violation of the transparency and equality of the parties, since only the prosecution party, namely the FSB, participated in the closed process. The organization’s representatives were not able to present their position to the court. At the same time, in the territory of Ukraine and most countries, the organization operates without restrictions at the level of national legislation. Since January 2015, Hizb ut-Tahrir criminal cases began to be initiated in Crimea, when the peninsula actually came under russian control. The party’s activities are not prohibited in Ukraine: the organization’s activists were involved in publishing a newspaper, could speak openly in the mass media, and held mass public events.
According to human rights defenders, the members of the organization are not being prosecuted for preparing a coup d’état and terrorism, as written in court verdicts, but for public actions of party supporters against political repression in Crimea, systemic criticism of the russian government, and mass disloyalty among Crimean Tatars in response to the annexation of Crimea in 2014 year.
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Lawyer Volodymyr Bilienko visited political prisoner Server Mustafaev in the russian colony in the Tambov Oblast. The human rights defender sentenced to 14 years of imprisonment informed him that he had entered the law faculty of the Moscow Academy of Management and Production in absentia but could not begin his studies. For this, Server Mustafaev needs Internet access and a laptop, which the family sent him back in September 2022. However, the colony administration still has not given the equipment to the human rights defender.
“Server said that he already has a session soon; he has to pass the first-year exams, but he still hasn’t gotten to the laptop,” Volodymyr Bilienko said to the Crimean Solidarity NGO after the meeting.
Server Mustafaev‘s wife, Maye Mustafayeva, said the training will take place for about four years in distance mode. “He is enrolled in the university, but his studies have not started. I don’t know how much it is possible to learn like this because we have been fighting this for 3-4 months,” says his wife.
In addition, the political prisoner appealed against several violations by the administration of the penal colony. He managed to deny part of the charges. “There were seven or eight accusations; he defended two of them, wrote explanatory notes, and these punishments were annulled. But some of them were not canceled – detention in a detention center, two or three written reprimands, the rest verbal reprimands,” explained lawyer Bilienko. He added that Mustafayev began to suffer from heart pains. In December 2022, he underwent electrocardiography, but Mustafayev has not yet received the necessary consultation from a cardiologist.
NUJU Information Service
The publication uses materials from the Crimean Solidarity NGO, the PEN-Ukraine website, the Krym.Realii website within the Radio Liberty project, the ZMINA Human Rights Center, the Memorial Society, and others. The NUJU Information Service expresses its profound gratitude to the colleagues for the opportunity kindly provided.
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