By Murad Rakhimov | 2025-12-31

The youngest is barely out of high school. Another has five children waiting at home. All four -- Crimean residents Esma Nimetulaeva, Fevzie Osmanova, Nasiba Saidova and Elviza Aliyeva -- now face years in prison after a Simferopol court extended their detention over allegations tied to Hizb ut-Tahrir, the Islamic group banned in Russia. Defense attorneys argued for house arrest. The court refused. The women will remain in a temporary detention facility until March 14, 2026.

First women targeted

More than 100 Crimeans are behind bars on similar charges, which the Memorial Human Rights Center considers politically motivated. Until this fall, every detainee was male.

That changed October 15, when Federal Security Service (FSB) agents arrived before dawn and arrested the four women during coordinated searches. Investigators accuse Nimetulaeva, a mother of five, of organizing a Hizb ut-Tahrir cell in Bakhchysarai. They accuse Osmanova and students Saidova and Aliyeva of taking part in it. Saidova, 19, is the youngest Crimean prisoner so far.

Authorities opened criminal cases under Article 205.5 of the Russian Criminal Code, covering the "organization of and participation in the activities of terrorist organizations." If convicted, Nimetulaeva could face 15 to 20 years, and the others 10 to 20, with the law allowing life sentences in special circumstances.

The arrests jolted the Crimean Tatar community. Dozens gathered outside the Crimean muftiate and later near the local government building, seeking explanations. Officials said they knew nothing, even though the FSB had already issued a statement and local media had reported the detentions, Novaya Gazeta Europe reported in October.

Journey to Moscow

Relatives and friends tried to attend the women's appeal hearing October 30 at the Supreme Court in Simferopol. The proceeding took place behind closed doors. Observers were barred, and the defendants were absent. Officials said the women had been sent October 23 to the Crimean Republic Psychiatric Hospital No. 1 for examination.

Once the court ordered the women held pending trial, relatives described grim conditions: no heat, no hot water and mattresses soaked from constant dampness.

Ten days earlier, a 16-member delegation of relatives, elders and activists left Crimea in two minibuses carrying more than 6,000 signatures demanding freedom for the "Bakhchysarai four." Police stopped them five times on the way to Moscow, questioning them for hours in several regions.

"We were all ready to drop. . . . We didn't get any food or water any of the times we were detained," said Dinar Iyupova, Saidova's mother, who spoke to Graty in November.

The group ultimately reached Moscow and submitted the petition to the federal ombudsman, the presidential administration and the Prosecutor General. They have received no response.

Broader repression context

Analysts say the case fits a broader pressure campaign against Crimean Tatars, heightened after recent Ukrainian strikes on Russian infrastructure in Crimea.

"This has made the Kremlin start to panic and be afraid when it comes to the loyalty of the local population," said Alisher Ilkhamov, director of Central Asia Due Diligence in London. He told Kontur that authorities view Crimean Tatars as potential partners for Ukraine, noting that the decision to prosecute women signals an effort to intimidate the entire community.

"In the detention facilities they threaten them with torture and even rape. Making accusations of belonging to Hizb ut-Tahrir has become a standard technique of autocratic regimes that is meant to justify repression against undesirable people," Ilkhamov said.

Uzbek political analyst Anvar Nazirov told Kontur that Hizb ut-Tahrir often appears in postcolonial societies facing identity crises, as in Central Asia after the Soviet collapse, before later becoming marginal. He said Crimea shows a similar dynamic.

"The first is the oppression of the peninsula's native population. The Crimean Tatars are seeking and trying to express their religious and ethnic identity," Nazirov said, citing poor social and economic conditions as fuel. He added that the group's simple ideology makes it easier for authorities to use its name to label opponents as radicals.

Nazirov noted that women frequently lead efforts to defend religious identity, a pattern seen in Central Asia in the 1990s and in the North Caucasus during protests against military mobilization in 2022.

Founded in the 1950s in East Jerusalem, Hizb ut-Tahrir declares that it rejects violence and has never carried out attacks. It is legal in most of Europe. Blogger and rights activist Alexander Kim said Moscow and Kyiv long treated it differently: banned in Russia and Central Asia but legal in Ukraine.

"It's because of this difference in the two countries' laws that members and followers of Hizb ut-Tahrir ended up in the situation they're in now after Russia occupied Crimea," Kim told Kontur.

He said some Russian officials view the country as exclusively Christian, feeding hostility toward other faiths.

"The result of this imperial logic is that any devoutness that is 'unconventional' according to supporters of this theory makes them act hostile," Kim said.

He argued that Crimean Tatars now live in a state hostile to their existence.

"The regime's goal is to eradicate the Crimean Tatars from the peninsula. If that can be accomplished by using 'affiliation' with religious organizations, the regime will do that," Kim said.