Direct Translation via Google Translate. Edited.
[KavkazUzel] The Kizilyurt district court in Dagestan sentenced local resident Batyr Aliyev, deported from Egypt after participating in militant activities in Syria, to three years of suspended imprisonment.
The sentence to a resident of Dagestan, whom the court recognized as a member of an illegal armed group abroad, was reported on December 27 by the press service of the republican FSB.
According to the investigation, the man “shared extremist ideology” and deliberately arrived in Syria to join the militants there. “Later, through Turkey, the man left for Egypt, from where he was deported in August 2023 and upon arrival in Russia he was detained by law enforcement agencies,” Interfax-South quotes an FSB representative as saying.
A resident of Dagestan was charged with participation in an armed formation not provided for by federal law (Part 2 of Article 208 of the Criminal Code of Russia). This article provides for from eight to fifteen years of imprisonment, but the court imposed a much milder sentence on the resident of Dagestan - three years of suspended imprisonment.
According to the file of the Kizilyurt District Court, the last case considered under this article was brought against Batyr Aliyev. He was sentenced on November 16, it came into force on December 4, and on December 27 the case was archived, according to the information on the court’s website.
From the verdict, also published on the court’s website, it follows that Batyr Aliyev had no previous convictions, was not officially married, although he previously had two wives, and did not work anywhere at the time the case was considered.
“About the beginning of 2013,” a resident of Dagestan, “sharing a religious ideology of an extremist nature,” decided to move to Syria and join the militants there. On November 10, 2013, he left Dagestan for Azerbaijan through the Yarag-Kazmalyar checkpoint, then arrived in Baku, from there on November 15 he flew to Istanbul, and on November 18 he went with a certain Samir to the Turkish-Syrian border, the text of the verdict says.
As the court found, by November 20, 2013, Aliyev had already arrived in the Syrian city of Bab al-Hawa, “which was controlled by illegal armed groups operating as a united front against government forces.” There he voluntarily joined one of these groups, but performed the duties of its member less than a month, until approximately December 10, 2013.
| That sounds like the original Free Syrian Army, made up of everything from romantically idealist Baathists who turned their back on the corrupt Assad government to Salafists and Muslim Brotherhooders to ISIS and Al Qaeda in Iraq in Syria/Al Nusra. By December of that year ISIS and Al Nusra had broken off from the group, and the six largest Muslim Brotherhood-style groups had set themselves up as the Islamic Front. As I recall, the non-religious rump of the Free Syrian Army subsequently withered away, the name being resurrected some years later by Turkey for its Ottoman proxy sockpuppets. |
Aliyev fully admitted his guilt in court, but refused to testify against himself. The text of the verdict also states that in Syria he met several people from Dagestan, natives of the Makhachkala village of Khushet, whom he identified from photographs provided by FSB officers as members of an illegal armed formation.
| Ah. His reduced sentence is a reward for turning state’s evidence. |
Judging by the text of the verdict, Aliyev was unable to give more detailed testimony against these people, citing the fact that his fellow countrymen “didn’t let him get close to them.”
Regarding himself, Batyr Aliyev said that he spent only two weeks among the militants, without having time to understand the activities of the unit. He then went to Turkey, and a month later he moved to Cairo and lived there for more than a year until he was detained by local law enforcement officers. After being in custody for about a month, he was deported to Russia.
Batyr Aliyev was in custody during the consideration of the case, from August 3 to November 16, 2023. As mitigating circumstances, the court took into account the admission of guilt, repentance, the presence of Aliyev’s young children and positive characteristics from his place of residence, and as a result, sentenced him to three years of suspended imprisonment with a probationary period of two years.
The "Caucasian Knot" also wrote that in April 2023, the cassation court returned for review to the prosecutor's office the case of Khanumkyz Kulibekova, whom the court in Khasavyurt sentenced to five years in prison on charges of intending to join an illegal armed group in Syria. The court recommended that the charges be reclassified under a more stringent article.
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