Russians illegally detain Crimean activist Yunus Masharipov in a psychiatric hospital for five Years

The occupying court of Crimea sent Yalta resident Yunus Masharipov for compulsory treatment in a psychiatric hospital for alleged sabotage. He has been held there for five consecutive years. The case against him was fabricated, accusing him of illegal production and possession of explosives and acquisition of ammunition, which is reported in an article by the publication Graty.

Yanus Masharipov, a photo of the Crimea Solidarity human rights grass-root initiative

Under torture, Masharipov incriminated himself, but in court, he retracted his testimony and spoke about the violence inflicted by FSB officers.

“They applied exposed wires to the soles of my feet, to my buttocks… Due to the physical pain, which I was unable to endure any longer, I began to incriminate myself against my will, that is, to say what they wanted to hear,” Masharipov stated.

Masharipov’s lawyer, Oleksiy Ladin, reported that Russian security forces found explosive substances in Masharipov’s hiding place without his participation. The defense suggested that the explosives could have been planted during the search.

Masharipov’s case began to be heard in July 2018 in the court of occupied Yalta, where he was later found guilty. For several years, Masharipov’s defense tried to exclude the record of the removal of biological samples from the evidence, which FSB officers conducted without a lawyer present. As a result, the victim ended up in a psychiatric hospital in March 2020 for compulsory treatment, where he has been for five years.

The man has lost contact with his relatives, and no one visits him.

Mariana Markova, a Russian activist, corresponds with Masharipov, having first written to him in January 2024. Later, she managed to speak with the prisoner by phone. During the conversation, he complained that he had lost contact with his family and asked her to send him a parcel. Mariana hired a lawyer who also managed to speak with Masharipov. Through the lawyer, the man asked for clothes, shoes, sweets, and texts of the Constitution and the Criminal Code of the Russian Federation.

According to human rights defenders from the Crimean Process, judges in Masharipov’s case repeatedly disregarded standards of fair justice.

“During detentions, the FSB of the Russian Federation accuses Crimeans of preparing sabotage, possessing weapons, and espionage. These cases have documented illegal methods of investigation and the use of torture to obtain confessions, violations of the presumption of innocence, and the dissemination of ‘confession’ videos by the FSB of the Russian Federation through Russian media,” the human rights defenders emphasized.

In modern Russia and the territories it occupies, security forces actively use the practice of forcibly placing people in psychiatric hospitals. There have been more such reports since the beginning of the full-scale invasion of Ukraine.

For example, 19-year-old Maksym Lypkan, who was tried for speaking about the war, was placed in a psychiatric hospital. Additionally, another civilian, Viktoria Petrova, was sent for compulsory treatment for “fakes about the army.”

In Russia, Soviet dissident Oleksandr Skobov, who experienced punitive psychiatry in the past, is currently on trial. The pensioner does not rule out that the current authorities will place him in a hospital again.

Russian security forces also use compulsory psychiatric treatment and commitment to psychiatric hospitals to persecute Crimean Tatars in temporarily occupied Crimea.

Also, several years ago, Kharkiv resident Oleksiy Pryanishnikov found his mother, who had been abducted from the occupation by Russians, in a psychiatric hospital in Russia. The woman was injected with haloperidol for refusing a Russian passport.