Russian border guards try to ban Crimean lawyers from traveling to OSCE conference

Russian border guards detained for unknown reason and interrogated Crimean lawyers Emil Kurbedinov and Edem Semedliayev, who were travelling to OSCE conference, on the checkpoint in the illegally occupied Crimea.

Emil Kurbedinov informed about the incident on his Facebook page.

The interrogation lasted one hour, then the lawyers went to Kyiv, where they plan to fly to Warsaw from to participate in the OSCE conference.

“After the border guards detained us for unknown reasons and an officer interrogated us at the checkpoint on the border with Crimea (Armiansk town) for an hour, I and Edem Semedliayev go to Kyiv, where we plan to fly to Warsaw from to participate in the OSCE conference. We hope that we will be able to cover the problems at a specially created platform dedicated to violations of the rights of Crimean Tatars and Crimean Muslims,” Kurbedinov wrote.

As a reminder, the participants in the OSCE Human Dimension Implementation Conference, held in Warsaw, discuss the issues of restriction on freedom of speech, human rights violations, particularly violations of the rights of Crimean Tatar people and Ukrainian people in the Russian-occupied Crimea and Donbas as a result of actions of Russian-backed illegal armed groups.