Yulia Yemelyanova. Photo: social media.
Kazakhstan has decided to extradite opposition activist Yulia Yemelyanova to Russia. The news was announced by lawyer Murat Adam, who represents her interests, although he was previously stripped of his law license over statements related to the case of ORDA.kz editor-in-chief Gulnara Bazhkenova.
“Just today we learned of the decision by the Prosecutor General’s Office of Kazakhstan to extradite another Russian activist, Yulia Yemelyanova. We are urgently preparing an appeal to the Supreme Court,” Murat Adam wrote on Facebook (banned in Russia and owned by Meta, which is designated as an extremist organization in Russia).
Yemelyanova is a former staff member of the St. Petersburg headquarters of Russian opposition politician Alexei Navalny.* In 2021, Russian authorities opened a criminal case against her on theft charges. Investigators allege she stole a phone from a taxi driver in St. Petersburg. Yemelyanova denied guilt and said the case was fabricated. She left the country once the case reached court.
On Aug. 31 last year, she was detained at Almaty airport. Yemelyanova was in Kazakhstan in transit, traveling from Georgia to Vietnam. She was detained because Russia had placed her on an interstate wanted list. She is currently being held in a pretrial detention center in Almaty.
Yemelyanova has applied for asylum in Kazakhstan, and her request is still under review.
Less than two weeks ago, Kazakhstan’s Prosecutor General’s Office approved the extradition to Russia of Chechen activist Mansur Movlaev, who had been denied refugee status. In early February, it was reported that 25-year-old IT developer Aleksandr Kachkurkin was deported from Kazakhstan to Russia, where he was detained on the plane and arrested on treason charges. On Feb. 5, a court in Astana denied refugee status to Russian serviceman Yevgeny Korobov. Once that decision takes effect, he will be required to leave Kazakhstan within 30 days. If deported to Russia, he faces up to 15 years in prison on desertion charges.
*Included by Russia’s financial monitoring agency on its list of individuals associated with extremist and terrorist activities.
