Russia frees Crimean dissident from psychiatric clinic

The entrance to a psychiatric ward of a hospital, in which Crimean dissident Ilmi Umerov was committed to compulsory psychiatric testing by local authorities in August, is pictured in Simferopol, Crimea, September 3, 2016. REUTERS/Anton Zverev

MOSCOW (Reuters) - Russian authorities freed a prominent Crimean dissident from a psychiatric clinic on Wednesday after he was held there for almost a month and subjected to enforced examinations, his lawyer and a colleague said; but he still faces a possible jail sentence.

Ilmi Umerov, deputy head of the Crimean Tatars' semi-official Mejlis legislature, which was suspended by Moscow after it annexed the peninsula from Ukraine in 2014, was committed to compulsory psychiatric testing by local authorities in August.