Gvashev treats persecution for prayer on Adygs' Memory Day as mockery

The Lazarevskoe District Court of Sochi has found Ruslan Gvashev, the former chairman of the Board of Elders of Circassians-Shapsugs, guilty of organizing an unsanctioned action on the Adygs' Memory Day, and fined him by 10,000 roubles. Gvashev said that he was taken to court in the state of hypertensive crisis, and treated the trial as "mockery."

The "Caucasian Knot" has reported that on May 21 Gvashev took part in the mourning prayer at the Tulip Tree in the village of Golovinka.

According to Aslan Gvashev, a former deputy chairman of the "Adyge-Khase" – the organization of Black Sea Adygs-Shapsugs, an Honoured Teacher of Kuban, today Ruslan Gvashev "was forced to the Lazarevskoe District Court."

He has added that the 67-year-old Ruslan Gvashev is disabled: his leg was amputated. He felt bad at the trial; an ambulance was called to him. However, the judge "would not postpone the session, although the doctors insisted on urgent hospitalization."

In his turn, Ruslan Gvashev said that he "prayed in the forgotten Adyg language and called to remember the ancestors," and "he did not call to any unlawful actions."

He also confessed that he "did not ask whether the action was sanctioned."

Full text of the article is available on the Russian page of 24/7 Internet agency ‘Caucasian Knot’.