Second Russian death sentence for a conversation? Crimean Tatar political prisoner’s health sharply deteriorates

Russia has already killed Dzhemil Gafarov, one of the 25 Crimean Tatar civic journalists and activists arrested in its worst attack to date on the Crimean Tatar human rights movement and is risking the life of a second political prisoner, 64-year-old Servet Gaziev.  It is, furthermore, doing so knowingly, with all the Russian players clearly confident of their full impunity.  The deterioration in his state of health now is almost certainly because he was denied proper treatment after sustaining a micro stroke in 2021 and was then beaten by staff when finally placed in a prison hospital. 

Svetlana Ablyamitova, Gaziev’s sister and a doctor by profession, recently spoke with her brother.  He complained of severe pain in his right arm, and major problems with coordination, with his fingers numb.  Earlier intestinal issues have also become worse again.

Although it was Dzhemil Gafarov who had a level of kidney disease which meant that, even according to Russian regulations, he should never have been imprisoned, Servet Gaziev (b. 1960) also had serious medical issues.  These were ignored when the Russian FSB came for him, Gafarov and 22 other Crimean Tatars active in the Crimean Solidarity human rights movement in March 2019.  It was then gravely exacerbated in Russian captivity.

The mass arrests on 27 March 2019 received international condemnation, with Russia’s attempt to use ‘terrorism charges’ on the grounds of unproven claims of ‘involvement’ in Hizb ut-Tahrir, a Muslim organization which is legal in Ukraine, convincing nobody.  Human Rights Watch, for example, stated that “the sweeping arrests in Crimea aim to portray politically active Crimean Tatars as terrorists as a way to silence them”.  All of the men were recognized almost immediately as political prisoners by the Memorial Human Rights Centre, and their release has been demanded by, among others, the European Parliament and US State Department.

There was virtually no attempt to conceal that these were reprisals, with the ‘terrorism’ charges based solely on an illicitly taped lecture (on courage) which the men had attended three years earlier and on the ‘testimony’ of anonymous ‘witnesses’.  The prosecution had tried to claim that a meeting at which the importance and meaning of courage had been discussed was actually a ‘khalakat’, or ‘conspiratorial meeting of members of Hizb ut-Tahrir’.  No attempt was ever made to explain why, if the FSB had found ‘terrorism’ in such a meeting, that the men had not been arrested in 2016. 

That lecture and supposed ‘witnesses’ whose testimony also dated back to the end of 2015 and early 2016 were used as the pretext, not only for sentencing men who had committed no crime to terms of imprisonment from 12 to 19 years, but also for torturing the gravely ill Gafarov to death and subjecting Gaziev to constant pain and torment.

In order to deflect international attention, Russia split the group into five separate and essentially cloned ‘trials’.  Servet Gaziev and Dzhemil Gafarov were both on ‘trial’ together with civic activists Alim Karimov; Seiran Murtaza and Erfan Osmanov.  The hearings in their ‘trial’ were constantly being postponed because either Gafarov or Gaziev, sometimes both, were in such pain that they could simply not sit up during the hearing.  There were distressing photos, some taken just before ambulances needed to be called.  In general, the prison staff, including its medics, did nothing, with Gaziev simply pumped full of painkillers before any court hearing.  Those same medics would also claim that he is sufficiently well to be held in the torture-like conditions of a Russian SIZO.  

In June 2021, Gaziev almost certainly suffered a micro stroke after months of acute pain and dangerously high blood pressure, and shortly after clear signs that he had contracted Covid-19.   In September 2023, Gaziev informed lawyer Emil Kurbedinov that the doctors who had carried out the only medical examination he received in four years had refused to disclose their diagnosis, and he had received no medical care.  It is clear that nothing has changed since then.

On 11 January 2023, ‘judges’ Valery Opanasenko, together with Andrei Zarya and Stanislav Zhidkov from the Southern District Military Court  sentenced  Dzhemil Gafarov, Servet Gaziev, Alim Karimov (b. 1994); Seiran Murtaza (b. 1983) and Erfan Osmanov (b. 1982) to 13 years’ maximum-security imprisonment.  They were well aware, as were the Russian prosecutors  Alexander Bondarev and Igor Nadolinsky, that these were death sentences against both Gafarov and Gaziev.

Dzhemil Gafarov died a month later, on 10 February 2023, after four years of torment, although his very detention from the outset had been in violation of Russia’s own regulations on conditions precluding imprisonment.  Russia has refused to investigate the direct involvement of Russian officials in his death.

On 11 September 2023, the military court of appeal in Vlasikha (Moscow region) upheld all five sentences.  On 12 November 2024, a cassation chamber of Russia’s supreme court finally cancelled the 13-year sentence against Dzhemil Gafarov, due to his death, while upholding all other sentences, including the effective death sentence against Servet Gaziev