In Crimea, the FSB took the 70-year-old mother of a Crimean Tatar political prisoner from her home for a “conversation”

On the morning of August 29, FSB officers in Bakhchisarai in Crimea took the mother of Crimean Tatar activist and political prisoner Seiran Saliyev for interrogation and held her for about six hours, Graty reported.

As Graty found out, the FSB officers came to 70-year-old Zodiye Saliyeva with a court order to inspect her apartment. When it turned out that the document contained an incorrect apartment number, they took the woman for a ‘conversation’ to the FSB office in Simferopol. They confiscated Saliyeva’s mobile phone to check her contacts and correspondence, as she was told; after the “conversation,” they did not return the device.

Seiran Saliyev was arrested in 2017 and in 2020, sentenced to 16 years in a maximum security prison for his participation in the Islamic organisation Hizb ut-Tahrir, which Russia considers extremist, but which operated freely in Crimea before its annexation by Russia in 2014.

According to Graty, Zodiye Saliyeva publicly supported her son and other imprisoned Crimean Tatar activists. In 2022, she and 11 other activists who came to a rally in support of activist Edem Dudakov in front of the Bakhchisarai District Court were detained by Russian police.