A court in Russia's southwestern city of Rostov-on-Don has sentenced Crimean Tatar activist and religious cleric Raif Fevziyev to 17 years in prison on charges of plotting to seize power and organizing the activities of a terrorist group.
The Crimean Solidarity public group said the Southern Military District Court sentenced Fevziyev on January 12, with the first three years of his term to be spent in a prison cell and the remainder in a penal colony. The court added that after his release, Fevziyev will remain under parole-like control for 18 months.
Fevziyev, an imam of a Muslim community in Crimea, has rejected all of the charges, saying the case against him was fabricated by Russian police.
He was arrested along with four other Crimean Tatar activists by Russia-installed police in Ukraine's Moscow-annexed Crimean peninsula last August after their homes were searched.
Ukrainian officials condemned the arrests of Fevziyev and four other Crimean Tatars at the time with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy calling the move "a blatant violation of human rights."
Since Russia illegally annexed Crimea in 2014, Russian authorities have prosecuted dozens of Crimean Tatars on various charges that rights organizations have called trumped-up.
On January 11, the same court in Rostov-on-Don sentenced five Crimean Tatars to lengthy prison terms on charges of being members of the Hizb ut-Tahrir religious group that is banned in Russia but is legal in Ukraine.
Rights groups and Western governments have denounced what they describe as a campaign of repression by the Russian-imposed authorities in Crimea who are targeting members of the Turkic-speaking Crimean Tatar community and others who have spoken out against Moscow's takeover of the peninsula.
Russia took control of Crimea from Ukraine in March 2014 after sending in troops, seizing key facilities, and staging a referendum dismissed as illegal by at least 100 countries.