The occupying country continues criminal persecution of Ukrainian citizens – 25-year-old Leniye Umerova has been under illegal administrative arrest for 4 months now just because she has a Ukrainian passport.

In December last year, Leniya was going to come to the temporarily occupied Crimea to take care of her father with cancer. However, the Russians detained her while crossing the Georgian-Russian border for allegedly “violating the rules of the restricted zone.” Until March 16, Lenia was held in the Center for the Temporary Detention of Foreign Citizens near Vladikavkaz, and a Russian court fined the Ukrainian citizen 2,000 rubles. At the exit of the Center, a car with security forces was waiting for the girl: They grabbed Lenia, put a bag over her head, took her to an unknown area of Vladikavkaz and left her there.

Almost immediately, she was detained by a local patrol, who drew up a report on alleged “disobedience to police officers,” for which the Leninsky District Court quickly sentenced her to 15 days of illegal administrative arrest. While Umerova was in the temporary detention center, a similar report was drawn up against her again: she allegedly refused to give her phone to the police. On March 27, the same court again sentenced her to 15 days of arrest. Leniya was transported to the temporary detention center in Beslan.

On April 9, a report was drawn up against the girl again for allegedly disobeying police officers, and on April 11, the Sovetsky Court of Vladikavkaz again imposed 15 days of arrest. The only reason for the outright abuse of the girl is that she refused to give up her occupation passport and has Ukrainian documents. However, the aggressor country continues to persecute the citizen of Ukraine without any grounds or guilt, in fact, the occupiers are holding her hostage.

We demand that the Russian Federation immediately release the citizen of Ukraine, a representative of the indigenous Crimean Tatar people, Leniya Umerova, and stop the criminal persecution. We call on the international community to respond and condemn this blatant violation of international humanitarian law. We draw the attention of the law enforcement agencies and the Prosecutor’s Office of the Autonomous Republic of Crimea and the city of Sevastopol to the violation of the fundamental rights and freedoms of a resident of the temporarily occupied peninsula.

Such arbitrariness and abuse of our citizens will be completely stopped only by the de-occupation of Crimea!