The convicted Crimean Tatars were FREED!
On May 17, 2007, the Supreme Court of Ukraine considered the second time the case of those Crimean Tatars who were accused and sentenced because of the incident known as " Simeiz-Cotton Bar" in 2004. The Court ruled that they were wrongly sentenced based on falsified data arranged by Ukrainian law enforcement agencies, pro-Russian chauvinist political groups and officials of Crimea. (For details, see http://www.azatliq.net/)Several days ago Elvis Kurtametov, previously sentenced to 5 years, was released before the expiration of his term of imprisonment (little bit more than 3 years instead which was established by the court). As a result, all jail terms between 4 and 8 years were reduced to 3,1 - 3,2 for other three compatriots: Lenur Malayev, Fahri Khalilov, Simar Khayredinov. It means that in a few days they will be again free and back in Crimea. The most important point is that the Supreme Court in it's resolution officially recognised that they were not physically in "Cotton Club," which means that all allegations of Azatliq against Ukrainian militia, Prosecutor office and local courts were totally right and justified. This case really was completely insinuated by Ukrainian State in order to oppress Crimean Tatars involved in land protests. Kurtseit Abdullaev's term of jail was reduced from 9 to 5 years of imprisonment. We hope that we'll be able to improve his situation even more.Of course Azatliq campaign put forward the goal of bringing total justice to our compatriots, to have them declared not guilty. However, this may never be possible if the intent is the prosecution of Crimean Tatars for their political struggle and their rights in Ukraine. Nevertheless we made the Ukrainian State to take a step back.On behalf of Executive Committee of Azatliq, I express our gratitude to all those who were helping us in this case and congratulate all compatriots all over the world with this very important victory in our struggle.

Crimean Tatars claiming land were attacked by police! On 18 Jan 2007 at 3 am the site huts raised by Crimean Tatars claiming theirland rights in Balaklavskaya Street, Simferopol were attacked by police (about 80people) and about 200 Cossacks. There were about 40 Crimean Tatars.Cossacks had cloistered spades and pickets, they chucked out CrimeanTatars from the site huts and put a fence. But Crimean Tatars didmanage to break the fence and force Cossacks out. There are two Crimean Tatars seriously wounded.