MOSCOW (AP) — Two prominent Crimean Tatar leaders who were imprisoned in Russian-occupied Crimea have been released and flown to Turkey, Ukraine’s president said Wednesday.
President Petro Poroshenko in a tweet Wednesday thanked the Turkish president for his help in mediating the releases of Ilmi Umerov and Akhtem Chiygoz.
Chiygoz, the deputy chairman of the Mejlis representative body for the Tatars in Crimea, had been sentenced to eight years in prison on a charge of organizing a riot during Russia’s 2014 annexation of the peninsula. Russia sent troops to Crimea and declared the annexation about three weeks later. …read more
Source: San Francisco Chronicle
