The occupation court in Henichesk sentenced 47-year-old resident of the urban-type settlement Novooleksiivka Eldar Karamurzaev to eight years of imprisonment in a maximum-security colony in the so‑called case of the battalion named after Noman Chelebidzhikhan.
This was written by the head of the Crimean Tatar Resource Center, Eskender Bariev.
The sentence was delivered on December 12, 2025. Karamurzaev became the 30th person convicted in this case in the newly occupied territories of the Kherson and Zaporizhzhia regions.
The man was detained on February 25, 2025 after an illegal search of his home. The occupiers accused him of alleged participation in the Crimean Tatar volunteer battalion named after Noman Chelebidzhikhan and of facilitating the economic blockade of Crimea. After the arrest, his FIAT car was also seized along with its vehicle registration document.
Eldar Karamurzaev is a person with a Group II disability — he has congenital cerebral palsy and cannot perform heavy physical work. Until 2014 he lived in Dzhankoi, and after the occupation of Crimea he and his family moved to Zhytomyr. Later he settled in Novooleksiivka, closer to the administrative border with Crimea.
During nine months of unlawful detention in a pre-trial detention center, the occupation court held only a few formal hearings. Human rights defenders stress that the case was completely fabricated and the charges lack any evidence. For several months Eldar’s mother tried to determine his whereabouts.
According to the Crimean Tatar Resource Center, in the case of the battalion named after Noman Chelebidzhikhan the occupiers have arrested 73 Ukrainian citizens: 21 in occupied Crimea and 52 in the newly occupied territories after 2022. Seven people in Crimea have already been convicted, while Karamurzaev became the 30th person convicted in the occupied parts of the Kherson and Zaporizhzhia regions.