Around 7 a.m., occupation forces broke into the house of human rights activist Abdureshit Dzhepparov in Belogorsk. The illegal search lasted for almost 3 hours, after which the man was taken away and taken in an unknown direction.

Dzhepparov’s family was not even able to call their lawyers, as their phones were immediately taken away. The lawyers visited the offices of the occupation special services, but Mr. Abdureshit was not brought to these institutions or simply did not provide information. The wife of the illegally detained Niar Abduraimov called the hotline and reported her husband’s abduction.

The Mission condemns the enforced abduction of the representative of the indigenous Crimean Tatar people Abdureshit Dzhepparov and demands the immediate release of the Ukrainian citizen.

We draw the attention of the law enforcement agencies and the Prosecutor’s Office of the Autonomous Republic of Crimea and Sevastopol to another crime of the occupation administrations of the Russian Federation. We call on the international community to increase political and diplomatic pressure on the aggressor country.

This is the second time Abdureshit Dzhepparov has been searched and detained since the start of the full-scale invasion – in March 2022, he spent 15 days under “administrative arrest” on false charges of allegedly “propagating Nazi attributes or symbols” on social media.