«No 9 : 31 August 1969»

From 1 July to 5 August a session of the Uzbek SSR Supreme Court took place in Tashkent.

The Judge was Saifutdinov, the People’s Assessors Samoilova and Isfandiarov; the Prosecutor Yenkalov; the defence lawyers, Monakhov, Zaslavsky and Safonov.

The accused were:

• Reshat Bairamov, 26, fitter;
• Aider Bariyev, 31, bulldozer-driver, father of two children;
• Svetlana Ametova, 28, nurse and mother of a six-year-old son;
• Munire Khalilova, 24, midwife;
• Riza Umerov, 49, electro-welder, father of two;
• Ruslan Eminov, 30, foreman and father of two;
• Izzet Khairov, 31, weights & measures engineer, Party member, father of two [¹];
• Rollan Kadiyev, 32, physicist, father of three [²];
• Ridvan Gafarov, 54, pensioner and Group II invalid; and
• Ismail Yazydzhiyev, 49, father of two, trained as a teacher, fought in Great Patriotic War, bricklayer.

The accused had previously made the following requests:

1.         that correspondents of Pravda, Izvestiya, and the Crimean Tatar paper Lenin bairagi be called to attend the trial;

2.         that the trial be given full press coverage and be broadcast live on television;

3.         that a commission of experts be called to attend the trial, to determine the facts about the questions raised in the documents to which the charges related;

4.         that observers from the CPSU Central Committee and the Soviet government be called to attend the trial;

5.         that the accused be given the necessary literature to prepare for the trial;

6.         that the conditions of their detention in prison be changed: the accused were living in cells overflowing with criminals, and could not make any preparations for their defence;

7.         that they be given the medical help they needed;

8.         that they receive a change of sheets and clothing.

*

Of all the requests only the last two were granted [³].

In protest at the refusal of the prison and judicial authorities to make available the necessary legal and political literature, on 20 June Rollan Kadiyev went on a hunger-strike, and he came into court in a condition testifying to this.

He called off his strike only when threatened with a separate trial.

*

PROSECUTOR YENKALOV

The accused declared their objection to the Prosecutor, Yenkalov, a man well known from other Crimean Tatar trials, and refused to answer his questions. Rollan Kadiyev declared his objection to the Judge also. The objections were not upheld.

Yenkalov was notable for his ill-mannered behaviour, his disregard for the law, and his lack of respect for the accused as people. He declared that the accused were not political but criminal offenders, and that was why they were being held in the conditions prescribed for criminal offenders. He repeatedly brought pressure to bear on the defence: he told the lawyers how they ought to advise their clients, cut them short, and demanded that the court rebuke them.

During the whole of the proceedings neither the court nor the prosecution raised the question of either corroborating or refuting the facts were described in the indictment as libellous fabrications. The prosecution was concerned only with proving that they were manufactured and distributed. The accused did not deny many of these facts, but they completely denied the libellous nature of the documents, and pleaded not guilty.

Prosecutor Yenkalov demanded: three years in the camps for Bairamov, Bariyev, Khairov and Kadiyev; eighteen months each for Umerov and Gafarov; a year each for Ametova, Khalilova and Yazydzhiyev; and one year of corrective labour for Eminov.

The defence demanded a verdict of not guilty.

*

SENTENCE

The court declared the accused guilty under the Articles cited against them: Article 190-1 (Russian Criminal Code) and the equivalent articles (187-1 and 191-4, respectively) of the UkSSR and Uzbek SSR Criminal Codes.

It sentenced them as follows:

• Reshat Bairamov and Rollan Kadiyev to three years in ordinary-regime camps;
• Aider Bariyev and Izzet Khairov to eighteen months; and
• Ridvan Gafarov and Ismail Yazydzhiyev to one year.

The court decided that the term spent in pre-trial custody (about ten months) was sufficient for Svetlana Ametova, Munire Khalilova and Riza Umerov.

Ruslan Eminov was given six months’ corrective labour. Yazydzhiyev’s term expires in September, Gafarov’s in October.

*

PROTEST

On 5 August, after the guilty verdict was passed, a crowd of about five to seven hundred Crimean Tatars who had gathered outside the courthouse marched in orderly fashion to the Procurator’s Office, and then to the Central Committee building of the Uzbek Communist Party.

A sit-in demonstration was organized outside the Procuracy.

Two blocks before they reached the Central Committee building, however, the demonstrators were met by a large force of police, who fell upon them. Some of the demonstrators were dispersed, some detained.

After twenty-four hours’ detention in police stations, almost all of them were released, except for four people who were given fifteen days’ in jail.

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NOTES

1. On Khairov, see CCE 13.10 [20], CCE 31.19, CCE 52.9-2 and CCE 57.7.
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2. On Kadiyev, see CCE 22.8 [15], CCE 47.7, CCE 51.13 and Name Index.
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3. See the later samizdat account of the trial (CCE 10.13 [2]).
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