"Freedom of Conscience" Committee calls to stop persecuting Ezhaev

The investigative actions conducted by law enforcers in the apartment of Aslambek Ezhaev, the director of the "Umma" publishing house, who is suspected of financing terrorism, were accompanied applying disproportionate force, members of the "Freedom of Conscience" Committee have stated demanding Ezhaev's fair trial and release.

The "Caucasian Knot" has reported that on April 28, 2021, operative actions were conducted in the apartment of Aslambek Ezhaev, a 58-year-old Moscow resident, after which he was detained. Then, the court arrested him until June 27. The criminal prosecution of the publisher has to do with his professional activities, members of the Russian Islamic community assert; while religious scholars have noted that Ezhaev's involvement in the propaganda of radical Islam causes doubts.

According to investigators, Ezhaev raised and transferred 34 million roubles from his accounts to the terrorist community.

The "Freedom of Conscience" Public Committee has circulated an open letter in connection with Ezhaev's arrest. "In the modern Russia, with its restrictions on the freedoms of conscience and religion, with hundreds of politically motivated cases on religious grounds, publishing Islamic literature ... is a deliberate risk and asceticism," the "CredoPress" website claims.

The authors of the appeal have noted that thanks to Ezhaev's work, "thousands of Muslims in Russia and other countries got acquainted with classical Islamic texts, including translations of the Koran." They have treated the publisher's arrest during Ramadan "as a law enforcers' provocation against the entire Russian Muslim community."

They also recalled that earlier several books of Ezhaev's publishing house were banned in Russia. Thus, last year a court in Samara found the interpretation of the Koran as extremist.