Russia has freed two prominent Crimean Tatar activists opposed to Moscow’s annexation of Ukraine’s Crimea region, their lawyer said Wednesday.
Ukraine’s leader thanked Turkey’s president for helping broker the release.
Ilmi Umerov, deputy head of the Crimean Tatars’ semi-official Mejlis legislature before it was suspended by Moscow, was sentenced last month by a Russian court to two years in jail for separatism.
Ahtem Chiygoz, another Crimean Tatar leader, was sentenced at the same time to eight years for stirring anti-Russian protests.
“What everyone had been waiting for so long, has happened,” a defense lawyer for the Crimean Tatars, Nikolai Polozov, wrote on his Facebook …read more
Source: Voice of America
