Yunus Masharipov was almost certainly targeted and tortured back in 2018 by Russia’s FSB for his human rights monitoring in occupied Yalta. His unwavering demand for justice has resulted in indefinite imprisonment in a ‘psychiatric hospital’
Yunus Masharipov Photo Crimean Solidarity
Yunus Masharipov Photo Crimean Solidarity
Yunus Masharipov has spent five years imprisoned in a Russian ‘psychiatric hospital’ after the FSB’s ‘case’ against the Yalta human rights activist, based solely on ‘confessions’ extracted through torture, collapsed. Instead of releasing Masharipov back then, in 2020, Russia resorted to Soviet punitive psychiatry and ordered that Masharipov forcibly undergo ‘psychiatric treatment’. Masharipov is turning 61 on 14 March 2025 and, without public attention to this horrific miscarriage of justice, could remain incarcerated indefinitely.
Lutfiye Zudiyeva, writing for Graty, reports that it is five years this March since Yunus Masharipov was moved from the SIZO, or remand prison, in occupied Crimea to a ‘psychiatric hospital’ in Dvoryanskoye (Volgograd oblast).
According to Russia’s criminal code, the person thus incarcerated should undergo a psychiatric examination every six months, with this initiated by the person’s psychiatrist if s/he thinks the ‘treatment’ needs to be changed or stopped, or at the request of the prisoner him/herself, their family or legal representative.
The first court extension of the person’s forced ‘treatment’/imprisonment is after six months, and then once a year.
The first problem is, clearly, that there were never any grounds for Masharipov to be forcibly placed in the psychiatric hospital, yet the psychiatrist ‘treating’ him allowed it then and is evidently willing to continue doing so. Masharipov has told a Russian activist, Marianna Markova that he has lost contact with his family. This is not just difficult because of the lack of moral support. It is families who typically seek medical and legal aid for political prisoners, and who send them parcels, containing the food, medicine, vitamins and other vital items without which it is hard to live in the appealing conditions of Russian places of confinement. Markova, who first wrote to Masharipov in January 2024 and then managed to phone him at his request, has proven a lifeline, but one that the ‘hospital’ authorities do not want him to have. After the first phone call, they prohibited any further claiming that only family members can call. Markova did, however, manage to find Masharipov a lawyer. He was also initially refused admission, but did finally get to see Masharipov, however only with ‘hospital’ staff present and, obviously, listening to every word. Masharipov asked to pass him clothing, shoes, sweet things and the texts of Russia’s constitution and criminal code.
It seems likely that the appearance of a lawyer has made the ‘hospital’ authorities ‘remember’ Masharipov’s rights, and they have now said that he can be visited by human rights organizations. Markova has already approached some of these and is awaiting their response.
As reported earlier, Masharipov’s lawyer in occupied Crimea, Alexei Ladin warned back in 2020 that such a ‘psychiatric’ sentence could spell indefinite imprisonment. One of the problems both with the Soviet Union’s politically motivated punitive psychiatry and with modern Russia’s reinstatement of it, is that it is very easy to hide the victims from view, making it very difficult to secure their release.
Yunus Masharipov was first seized by the FSB on 27 September 2017 and accused of preparing explosives. A videoed ‘confession’ was produced in which Masharipov, who is from Yalta, said that he had been ‘recruited’ by the Kherson branch of the Mejlis [self-governing body] of the Crimean Tatar people and Ukraine’s Security Service [SBU]. He says that he had gathered information about the socio-economic situation and put up posters of a campaigning nature, and also strewn used needles on the beach in Yalta so that tourists would stop coming. As is often the case, Russia’s FSB were not especially concerned about credibility. At one point, Masharipov states that he had, on 6 August 2017, set fire to forest in Yalta. There is then a very obvious break in the tape, after which Masharipov says that he had not had time to carry out the ‘explosion’ to cause this fire before being arrested. It is claimed that the alleged ‘explosive devices’ were going to be used for this fire. That was one of many places
The tape had very clearly been cut and pasted together, and Masharipov himself appeared to be trying to remember his lines.
The mention in this ‘confession’ of the Crimean Tatar Mejlis was especially incriminating. It came just months after UN’s International Court of Justice specifically ordered Russia to revoke its extraordinary ban of the Mejlis, and began one of several political trials expressly aimed at discrediting the Mejlis and its members.
In December 2017, Masharipov issued public statements to both ex-Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko and to Viktor Palagin, the then head of the Russian FSB in occupied Crimea. He stated then, and repeated consistently subsequently, that he had been tortured into ‘confessing’ to crimes he had never committed. He asserted that it had been after he told his captors on 27 September that he had reported human rights abuses in occupied Crimea that he had been beaten and tortured with the use of electric shocks. He said that he had been forced to give several different ‘confessions’ on video.
The defence repeatedly pointed out that, aside from this supposed ‘confession’, the case was based solely on claims by FSB officers, citing a source that they claimed they could not reveal. Ladin also noted that the supposed explosives
None of this, nor multiple procedural infringements regarding the alleged material evidence, deterred ‘judge’ Vladimir Romanenko from the occupation Yalta city court from sentencing Masharipov on 13 November 2018 to four years’ imprisonment and a 110 thousand rouble fine. The Kremlin-loyal media quoted the FSB in claiming that Masharipov had been planning to set fire to the forest ‘to destabilize the socio-political situation in Crimea’. The charges were under Article 223.1 § 1 of Russia’s criminal code (illegal preparation of an explosive device) and 222.1 § 1 (illegal procurement, possession, carrying of such explosive devices).
That sentence was upheld at appeal level by ‘judges’ Liudmyla Kapustina, Oksana Aikasheva and Sergei Pogrebniak. It was, however, dismissed at a cassation hearing, with the case sent back to the same occupation ‘Yalta city court’ for retrial.
On 3 March 2020, this same ‘court’, under ‘judge’ Sergei Smirnov, asserted that Masharipov had committed a crime but that he was mentally unfit and ordered that he be placed against his will in a psychiatric hospital. The appeal against this was rejected on 25 June 2020 by the occupation ‘Crimean high court’, under presiding ‘judge’ Konstantin Karavayev. That ‘court’ did, however, terminate the criminal prosecution over the charge of preparing explosives and acknowledged Masharipov’s right to ‘rehabilitation’.
That ruling was appealed by both the defence and the prosecutor, with these heard on 1 March 2021 at the Fourth Cassation Court in Krasnodar. As well as the grounds for refuting the charges against Masharipov, the defence also pointed to the fact that the issue of his mental state had not been properly examined. Experts had not been called and the two ‘opinions’ contradicted each other. The prosecutor had demanded that the appeal ruling, finding that Masharipov had not prepared explosives, be revoked. Typically, the ‘court’ went along with the prosecutor and ordered the case to be sent for a new panel of judges at the Crimean high court’. It was these judges who, on 27 April 2021, both convicted Masharipov of the lesser of two charges, despite totally flawed ‘evidence’, and upheld the order for his incarceration in a psychiatric institution.
Had Masharipov accepted an evidently unjust sentence back in 2018, he would have been freed almost four years ago. Please help publicize this case. Russia must not be allowed to reinstate punitive psychiatry and use it as a weapon against Ukrainian citizens on occupied territory. Publicity can help to free Yunus Masharipov and to deter Russia from using such indefinite incarceration against other Ukrainians who dare to speak out.