Article 205.5 of the Criminal Code of the Russian Federation

Article 205.5 punishes organizing (Part 1: fifteen to twenty years or life) or participating in (Part 2: ten to twenty years) the activity of an organization that a Russian court has designated terrorist. The designation itself is the whole case: once an organization is on the list, attending a meeting, keeping its literature, or discussing religion with its members is "participation", and the prosecution does not need to show any planned or actual violence.

Most documented cases concern alleged members of Hizb ut-Tahrir, an Islamic movement banned by the Russian Supreme Court in 2003 and legal in Ukraine, which is why the article has fallen heavily on Crimean Tatars after the 2014 annexation of Crimea: kitchen-table conversations recorded by informants become "cells", and sentences of fifteen to nineteen years are routine. The same mechanism has since been applied to other groups placed on the list. Trials are held in military courts, often in Rostov-on-Don, far from the defendants' families.