The Second Western District Military Court of Russia sentenced Ayder Muzhdabayev, the journalist and deputy general director of the Crimean Tatar TV channel ATR, to 6 years in prison in absentia.
This was reported by the Russian state news agency TASS.
Muzhdabayev was found "guilty" of the article about calls for terrorism. He was also banned from administering websites for 4 years.
According to the investigation, in 2018, Muzhdabaev posted two texts on his Facebook in which he "called for violent actions and the capture of Russian citizens" in Ukraine, in order to then exchange them for director Oleg Sentsov, who was in the colony in Labitnang at the time.
- The case against Muzhdabaev was initiated on July 23, 2019. On June 25, 2020, the Investigative Committee of Russia indicted Muzhdabayev and announced that he was declared an international wanted man.