Abductions: from sensation to routine. How the practice of enforced disappearances has changed in the occupied Crimea

Enforced dis­ap­pear­ances, arbi­trary deten­tions and polit­i­cal­ly moti­vat­ed pros­e­cu­tions in the occu­pied Crimea have become the rou­tine. This state­ment was made by human rights defend­ers at a ses­sion of the UN Human Rights Coun­cil last week. 

Before that, the local human rights ini­tia­tive Irade not­ed in its report that the prac­tice of abduc­tions by secu­ri­ty forces con­tin­ues in Crimea.

Read about the specifics and scale of the prob­lem on the occu­pied penin­su­la in this arti­cle.

Self-defence units and flying squads

Dur­ing the almost 11 years of occu­pa­tion of Crimea, the process of enforced dis­ap­pear­ances has under­gone at least sev­er­al trans­for­ma­tions. In the first few months after the Russ­ian army invad­ed the penin­su­la, abduc­tions were asso­ci­at­ed with the cleans­ing of the occu­pied ter­ri­to­ry from the most active par­tic­i­pants in peace­ful resis­tance. Some were lat­er released from the base­ments and expelled from Crimea after severe tor­ture. At the same time, noth­ing is known about the fate of some arbi­trar­i­ly detained per­sons, but the body of Reshat Ame­tov, who was abduct­ed by the Crimean self-defence unit at that time, clear­ly demon­strates the options for the devel­op­ment of these events. How­ev­er, one of the pecu­liar­i­ties of that peri­od was that each such fact caused a seri­ous pub­lic res­o­nance.

Then the prac­tice of enforced dis­ap­pear­ances changed sig­nif­i­cant­ly. The main per­pe­tra­tors were not half-drunk self-defence mem­bers at rail­way sta­tions and squares, or for­mer Berkut offi­cers at check­points, but unknown men in cam­ou­flage and bal­a­clavas. Their actions, accord­ing to eye­wit­ness­es, were always pur­pose­ful and coor­di­nat­ed, and the abductees were usu­al­ly tak­en away in blue minibus­es with tint­ed win­dows. The risk group has also changed – they are now most­ly abduct­ing Crimean Tatars, who have a poten­tial con­nec­tion to the con­flict in Syr­ia not on the side of Assad. Dur­ing this peri­od, there were no hap­py end­ings – all abductees have not been found yet. That peri­od end­ed in 2016 with the abduc­tion of Crimean Tatar politi­cian Ervin Ibrahi­mov, who had noth­ing to do with the Syr­i­an events, and then the abduc­tions stopped for a long time.

They stopped hiding their involvement

The new stage is char­ac­terised by the open involve­ment of FSS offi­cers in the dis­ap­pear­ances. An unsuc­cess­ful “tri­al run” took place in 2017, when, after a search, Russ­ian secu­ri­ty forces took reli­gious activist Renat Par­alam­ov to an unknown des­ti­na­tion. The pub­lic res­o­nance forced them to release the Crimean, who had been tor­tured to uncon­scious­ness, the next morn­ing right at a bus stop in Sim­fer­opol. How­ev­er, the spe­cial ser­vice car­ried out “work on mis­takes” and, in all like­li­hood, sub­se­quent­ly received carte blanche for abduc­tion and tor­ture.

For exam­ple, in March 2021, jour­nal­ist Vla­dyslav Yesypenko was abduct­ed and tor­tured, in Sep­tem­ber – the Akhte­mov broth­ers, and in April 2022 – civil­ian jour­nal­ist and human rights defend­er Iry­na Danylovych. The pecu­liar­i­ty of this stage of abduc­tions is the pre­dictable out­come: after sev­er­al days of uncer­tain­ty, the dis­ap­peared are found in a pre-tri­al deten­tion cen­tre in a seri­ous moral and phys­i­cal con­di­tion, and repen­tant con­fes­sions of com­mit­ting cer­tain crimes are broad­cast on pro­pa­gan­da resources. In the courts, the gap in the dates between the dis­ap­pear­ance of the vic­tim and the bring­ing of charges is cyn­i­cal­ly explained by FSS offi­cers as “he came and stayed in the build­ing vol­un­tar­i­ly for sev­er­al days”.

Victims of filtration

With the start of the full-scale inva­sion, refugees from the new­ly occu­pied regions began to arrive in Crimea, and Russ­ian oper­a­tives “kind­ly” met them at bor­der cross­ings. All men and most women were required to under­go a set of pro­ce­dures called “fil­tra­tion”. They checked the con­tents of their phones, tat­toos on their bod­ies, biogra­phies and con­nec­tions with the Ukrain­ian mil­i­tary or spe­cial ser­vices. Those who for some rea­son aroused sus­pi­cion were not heard from for a long time.

The sto­ry of Kher­son busi­ness ana­lyst Ivan Kozlov, who dis­ap­peared with­out a trace after being detained at the Armi­an­sk bor­der cross­ing point for six months, is one of numer­ous exam­ples of a new stage in the “evo­lu­tion” of enforced dis­ap­pear­ances in Crimea. Its char­ac­ter­is­tic fea­ture is that the vic­tim is held incom­mu­ni­ca­do for a long time in an unknown place with­out legal assis­tance and con­tact with rel­a­tives, and then at some point is “found” and accused of a trumped-up crim­i­nal offence.

Revenge for the rails

On the “sacred” day for the Rus­sians, Feb­ru­ary 23, 2023, a suc­cess­ful sab­o­tage was car­ried out against the occu­piers on the rail­way in the Bakhchysarai dis­trict. Since then, the prac­tice of enforced dis­ap­pear­ances has become almost a rou­tine due to its mas­sive use against Crimeans. The main fea­ture of that peri­od was the trans­fer of detainees to an unknown des­ti­na­tion, some­times with a bag over their heads. Often to a base­ment, with threats of tor­ture and always with inter­ro­ga­tion on a “lie detec­tor”. Some­times peo­ple were not abduct­ed from their homes, but sim­ply on the road: the car was stopped by a traf­fic police inspec­tor, and then the secu­ri­ty forces took them to the same base­ment for sim­i­lar inter­ro­ga­tion.

A dis­tinc­tive fea­ture of that peri­od was that the secu­ri­ty forces con­duct­ed all inter­ro­ga­tions of the abductees sole­ly to estab­lish their involve­ment in rail­way sab­o­tage. Of course, the right to defence for those who were inter­ro­gat­ed was out of the ques­tion. Accord­ing to lawyer Edem Semedli­aiev, at the entrance to the FSS depart­ment, where he arrived to defend the abduct­ed Rolan Osman­ov, he was told that his client did not need legal assis­tance, as “no pro­ce­dur­al actions were being car­ried out with him”. Anoth­er pecu­liar­i­ty was that most of the abductees were not deprived of their lib­er­ty after the poly­graph. How­ev­er, in some cas­es, arrests were made under false claims, in par­tic­u­lar to hide traces of phys­i­cal vio­lence against the abductees.

Now they don’t let go

In Novem­ber 2023, the prac­tice of enforced dis­ap­pear­ances in Crimea again under­went neg­a­tive changes. Now, just like in the spring of 2023, FSS offi­cers detain Crimeans in their homes and take them to an unknown des­ti­na­tion, but then do not release them after inter­ro­ga­tion with a poly­graph. They also do not charge them with trumped-up cas­es a few days after the tor­ture. The detainees sim­ply “dis­ap­pear”, and nei­ther their rel­a­tives nor their lawyers can get infor­ma­tion from the secu­ri­ty forces about their where­abouts and legal sta­tus for months.

As not­ed in the Irade report, the where­abouts of con­struc­tion work­ers Farkhad Soli­iev and Serv­er Ali­iev, who were abduct­ed in Sev­astopol, have remained unknown for almost a year. No spe­cif­ic infor­ma­tion is giv­en to the rel­a­tives of Ismail Shemshedi­nov, who was tak­en to an unknown des­ti­na­tion by the FSS in Jan­u­ary 2024, or to the rel­a­tives of Choras Aki­mov, who was abduct­ed after a search in March this year. There is almost no infor­ma­tion about the three women who dis­ap­peared in the vil­lage of Lenine in the spring of this year, and at least two men who dis­ap­peared in August this year in Feo­dosia.

Serious challenge

It is obvi­ous that enforced dis­ap­pear­ances have become a rou­tine tool of the Russ­ian secu­ri­ty forces in Crimea. This is espe­cial­ly true giv­en the fact that human rights on the occu­pied penin­su­la have long been out of the focus of the inter­na­tion­al com­mu­ni­ty. A strong infor­ma­tion­al and diplo­mat­ic response to each such case could stop the steady increase in the num­ber of abduc­tions, which are becom­ing a rou­tine pro­ce­dure for Russ­ian secu­ri­ty forces. How­ev­er, in today’s real­i­ty, we can’t count on this.

There­fore, human rights defend­ers and experts are cur­rent­ly fac­ing a seri­ous chal­lenge to devel­op inno­v­a­tive strate­gies that will be able to influ­ence the sit­u­a­tion in the con­text of a sig­nif­i­cant dete­ri­o­ra­tion in the human rights sit­u­a­tion in dif­fer­ent regions of the world and a lack of atten­tion to the sit­u­a­tion in the occu­pied Crimea