Watchdog

A court in Russia-annexed Crimea has ruled that a noted Crimean Tatar activist, Ilmi Umerov, must be placed in a psychiatric clinic for examination.

The Kyiv District Court in Simferopol on August 11 approved the motion by investigators. Umerov's lawyer, Nikolai Polozov, said that the court's ruling will be appealed.

Umerov, 59, former deputy chairman of Crimean Tatars' self-governing body -- the Mejlis -- was charged with separatism in May after he made public statements against the annexation of Ukraine's Crimea by Russia.

Umerov was allowed to stay home during investigations into his case.

The Moscow-based Memorial human rights center has called the case against Umerov "illegal and politically motivated."

The majority of Crimea's indigenous people, Crimean Tatars, opposed the peninsula’s annexation by Moscow in March 2014.

Based on reporting by UNIAN and Interfax

A court in Russia has refused to grant early release on parole to a Russian activist in the southern region of Krasnodar who was jailed on charges of propagating extremism and separatism via the Internet.

Darya Polyudova was sentenced to two years in a minimum-security penal colony in December, becoming the first person in Russia convicted under a law criminalizing calls for separatism on the Internet that came into force in May 2014.

Polyudova's mother, Tatyana Polyudova, wrote on Facebook that a court in the city of Novorossiisk did not provide any reasons for its August 10 decision.

Polyudova was indicted in 2014 after she criticized Moscow online for its support of Russia-backed separatists in Ukraine's east, where fighting between government forces and the separatists has killed more than 9,500 people since April 2014.

The Moscow-based Memorial Human Rights Center has added Polyudova to its list of political prisoners in Russia.