There have been an increasing number of abductions in Crimea. It is usually Tatars who disappear in unexplained circumstances. Relatives of the victims have made serious allegations against the Russian police, reports GHN based on DW.
"What's he eating? Has he been able to cut his hair? And above all, is he still alive?" These are the questions Abdurashid Jeparov, a resident of the Tatar village Sary-Su in Crimea, has been asking himself ever since his 18-year-old son Islam disappeared. Jeparov describes his son as a tall, slim young man and a practicing Muslim who wanted to study medicine. On 27 September Islam wanted to visited his five nephews who are being raised by his widowed sister. He used to visit them every day. That evening he set off to see them with his cousin, 25-year-old Cevdet.
"Later that evening a car drove in front of my house and honked loudly. It was a neighbor. She had just seen unidentified people dragging Islam and Cevdet into a car," says Jeparov. According to the witness, the car had tinted windows and a Crimean license plate, and the men who got out of it were wearing a uniform with white writing on the back. Jeparov stresses that he went straight to the police. "They could have blocked all the roads. You can't get very far in Crimea!" But that didn't happen - which is why Jeparov suspects Russian policemen were involved in the kidnapping.

When the investigators interrogated the relatives, Jeparov says he was made to feel not like a victim but a culprit. "They held us until late into the night, and asked questions about Islam and its different currents, including the radical ones. Whether this was something I knew about! Of course the investigators have to gather information. But they have to understand me as a father. My son has disappeared," Jeparov says.
This is not the first misfortune in Abdurashid Jeparov's family. His eldest son Abdullah has been missing for the past two years. Abdullah and Cevdet initially planned to go to Turkey to earn money. Then the two cousins ended up in the Syrian war zone. Cevdet came home, Abdullah did not. No one in the family wants to talk about why the young men were in Syria, but perhaps no one really knows. It's possible they were fighting on the side of the Free Syrian Army.