The Crimean Tatar imprisoned by Russia, promoted to high office by Ukraine

Then-Deputy Chairman of the Mejlis of the Crimean Tatar People Nariman Dzhelyal (left) and human rights activist Liudmyla Huseinova, who were imprisoned on Russian-controlled Ukrainian territories and later released as part of a prisoner swap, commemorate imprisoned, detained and missing journalists and artists [File: Alina Smutko/Reuters]

Kyiv, Ukraine – Seventeen years in jail for “smuggling explosives” and “organising a diversion” to blow up a natural gas pipeline.

That’s the sentence Nariman Dzhelyal, a Crimean Tatar community leader in the annexed Black Sea peninsula, was handed in 2022 after a year-long trial that Ukraine decried as “trumped-up” and orchestrated by the Kremlin.