A court in Russia's southwestern city of Rostov-on-Don has sentenced another Crimean Tatar activist to 20 years in prison -- more than the sentence prosecutors sought -- on terrorism charges.
The Southern Military District Court sentenced Ansar Osmanov on June 16, with the first five years of his term to be spent in a prison cell and the remainder in a penal colony.
Prosecutors asked the court to sentence Osmanov to 18 years in prison but in an unusual move, the judge handed the defendant a longer prison term. No explanation for the longer sentence was given.
Osmanov rejected the charges and called his sentence a continuation of the repression Crimean Tatars faced during Soviet times.
Osmanov was arrested along with three other Crimean Tatar activists by Russia-installed police in Ukraine's Moscow-annexed Crimea in February last year after their homes were searched. They were all accused of being members of the Hizb ut-Tahrir Islamic group, which is banned in Russia as a terrorist organization but is legal in Ukraine.
The Moscow-based Memorial human rights group has recognized all four detained men as political prisoners.
Since Russia seized Crimea in 2014, Russian authorities have prosecuted dozens of Crimean Tatars on various charges that rights organizations have called trumped up.
Moscow’s takeover of the peninsula was vocally opposed by many Crimean Tatars, who are a sizable minority in the region.
Exiled from their homeland to Central Asia by Soviet authorities under the dictatorship of Josef Stalin during World War II, many Crimean Tatars are very wary of Russia and Moscow's rule.
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.