Emir-Usein Kuku has been one of the most prominent Crimean Tatar human rights defenders. Kuku is married and has two children.

He was born in Novorossiysk (Russia). In 1993, the family moved to Crimea. They obtained a plot of land for the erection of a house in the native village of Kemala Cook in Koreiz.

In 2000, Kuku graduated from Kherson National Technical University with a degree in management. In 2001, he graduated from Kharkiv Financial and Economic Institute, majoring in accounting.

Before the annexation of Crimea, Kuku fought for the preservation of a Crimean Tatar cemetery and was involved in monitoring cases of discrimination against Muslims. Since 2014, he participated in helping Crimean political prisoners and in the search for missing people. Kuku was the organizer of a rally in memory of the deportation of Crimean Tatars in 2014.

Crimea came under Russian control following the events of February-March 2014, when Russia used its troops to occupy the peninsula and organised a “referendum” to justify the territory’s annexation in violation of international law.

Emir-Usein was arrested on 11 February 2016 and charged with "organising activities of a terrorist organization" for his alleged association with Hizb ut-Tahrir, an Islamic movement which is banned as a “terrorist” organization in Russia but is legal in Ukraine. He denies any involvement in Hizb ut-Tahrir. The charges against him and his co-defendants are based on covertly acquired, and allegedly tampered, recordings of conversations, testimonies of “secret witnesses” and testimonies of Russian law enforcement officers, which they denounce as false. When the investigation was completed in December 2017, Emir-Usein Kuku and his co-defendants were transferred from the Russian-occupied Crimea to the city of Rostov-on-Don (southwestern Russia), in violation of international humanitarian law. Their trial before a military court also violated their right to a fair trial.

According to the Kharkiv Human Rights Protection Group, the only evidence that the prosecution has provided is a "pseudo assessment of a recorded conversation in the kitchen”, where the men were discussing the situation in Russia, Ukraine, the fate of Crimea, the place of Islam in both countries and various religious postulates.

Although the prosecution failed to present in court any credible evidence of the involvement of the defendents in any internationally recognizable crime, the court convicted them for membership in a “terrorist” organization.