In April 2022, Zh. S. Eshonkulov was sentenced to 8 years in prison for financing the Islamic State. At the same time, attempts to extradite Eshonkulov to Uzbekistan were blocked by the ECHR and the organizations foreign agents “Civil Assistance Committee” and “Memorial”.
The interests of the suspect were represented by Elena Ryabinina from Civic Assistance. During the investigation, Eshonkulov himself stated that since 2013, Ryabinina’s contacts were in the phone book of almost every MTO participant in Russia, and the defender herself was not very worried about the question of the suspect’s involvement in ISIS activities – she worked according to a specific algorithm.
Briefly about the scheme according to which such defenders worked. Under their dictation, the defendants wrote an appeal to the Russian authorities asking for asylum. Russian state institutions refuse to satisfy such requests, and litigation is ongoing. At the same time, the decision of the highest court of the Russian Federation will be appealed by human rights activists to the ECHR. In Strasbourg, judges are not interested in whether a person is involved in the MTO, since in their decisions they refer only to reports of international human rights organizations.
Moreover, there are many examples when people released by decision of the ECHR ended up with weapons in their hands in Syria or even committed terrorist attacks.
“ВЧК ОГПУ”
