Russian court in Crimea upholds fining the newspaper Qirim for "discrediting the RFAF"

The newspaper Qirim. Photo by ctrcenter.org

The Russia-installed Kyiv District Court of Simferopol dismissed the appeal by the newspaper Qirim and upheld the ruling to fine the entity 300 thousand rubles (approximately 140,230 hryvnias) for "discrediting the Russian Federation Armed Forces," reports the public initiative "Crimean Solidarity", citing the lawyer Liliya Gemeci.

The newspaper was fined for a post on their website. A total of four administrative cases were opened against the editorial team's members.

Center for Countering Extremism operative V. Korenevsky opened two cases against Qirim the legal entity for "discrediting Russia's armed forces and misrepresenting evidently false information as truth." Two other cases target the founder and director of the newspaper, Seyran Ibrahimov.

The chief editor Bekir Mamutov also has two cases opened against him over the same posts on the newspaper's website

The post in question is an essay by the Crimean Tatar Qurultayı member Ali Özenbaş explaining why Crimeans should take no part in Russia's "special operation" in Ukraine.

Lawyer Liliya Gemeci notes that the administrative report drawn up against the newspaper for this essay was reviewed to verify the jurisdiction. Instead of the Kyiv District Court of Simferopol, the case was supposed to be tried by the Simferopol District Court.

There were also changes made to the protocol after it was filed, which violated the order of administrative proceedings.

The defense also stressed that Ali Özenbaş's essay was incorrectly translated. To their complaint, the defense attached translations of Crimean Tatar words from online dictionaries, which are "quite limited," Gemeci emphasizes. The translator was not warned about their liability for deliberately false translation.

According to Gemeci, there were similar errors in Bekir Mamutov's case, and the court passed the report back to eliminate them. However, during the re-drafting of the report, the translator was warned about their rights and obligations as per Article 17.9 of the Criminal Code of the Russian Federation, which makes no mention of rights and obligations for deliberately false translation.

Gemeci stresses that in both cases the translations do not meet the legal requirements and the cases should be dismissed due to the lack of corpus delicti. She plans to file a cassation appeal.

The judgement by the Kyiv District Court will soon enter into force, and the newspaper has 60 days to pay a fine of 300,000 rubles.

"The amount is significant and unsustainable for a national media outlet. So not just the newspaper's subscribers, but also all of our people should unite to help pay this fine," said the lawyer.

In late May of this year, two cases against Qirim were opened for "discrediting Russia's armed forces and misrepresenting evidently false information as truth." According to Center E (the CCE), Bekir Mamutov "spread information aimed at discrediting the deployment of the Russian Armed Forces for the purpose of defending the interests of the Russian Federation and its citizens, international peacekeeping and maintaining security within the framework of the demilitarization and denazification of Ukraine." In this way, according to operative Korenevsky, the newspaper "expressed disagreement with the conduct of the SMO" and committed a crime under Part 1 of Article 20.3.3 of the Criminal Code of the Russian Federation.

On June 7, the Kyiv District Court of Simferopol fined the editors of the Crimean Tatar newspaper Qirim 300,000 rubles (approximately 140,230 hryvnias) for "discrediting" the Armed Forces of the Russian Federation.

As IMI reported, as of June 4, 2024, the Russian Federation has unlawfully imprisoned 218 people, at least 16 of whom are journalists, citizen journalists and bloggers.