From Human Rights in Ukraine by Halya Coynash
This is the worst sentence to date against a Crimean Tatar political prisoner and comes as Russia is increasingly releasing men convicted of real crimes, if they agree to fight in Ukraine
Russia’s notorious Southern District Military Court has sentenced Ansar Osmanov, a Crimean Tatar civic activist, to twenty years in the worst of Russian penal colonies. This appalling sentence against a man not accused of any recognizable crime comes just days after Russian president Vladimir Putin acknowledged that he has pardoned killers convicted of multiple crimes after they were recruited in prison to fight in Ukraine. As Osmanov’s lawyer, Emil Kurbedinov pointed out, the verdict also comes against a background of 7-8-year sentences for savage murder in occupied Crimea, with such convicted killers likely to be released having served half that time. Not one Crimean Tatar or other Ukrainian political prisoner has ever been released even one day earlier than the sentence passed.
Voice of Ukraine 