Crimean Solidarity civic journalist Amet Suleimanov has suffered a second hypertensive crisis since Russia began executing what can only prove to be a death sentence against the recognized political prisoner. Even according to Russian legislation, Suleimanov’s condition means he should not be in prison, and each such crisis, and the likely damage caused to vital organs, places his life in real jeopardy.
Amet’s wife, Lilia Liumanova recently returned from one of the very few visits that her family are allowed. They learned there that in early July Amet suffered a second hypertensive crisis, with his blood pressure reaching 210. He was in a terrible state, feeling extremely weak, with a headache and heavy sensation in his chest. Although his blood pressure has now stabilized, he still complains of pain in the chest, and of becoming exhausted almost immediately. Lilia has since explained to Crimean Solidarity that her husband has a strange, very itchy, rash on his body and spots. These sometimes disappear, but then recur again, and could well point to damage caused the liver,
Suleimanov has also experienced a serious deterioration in eyesight, with this diagnosed last autumn as caused by retinal angiopathy, damage to the blood vessels in the retina which, if untreated, could lead to blindness.
Amet Suleimanov (b. 1984) suffers from chronic rheumatic heart disease, aortic insufficiency, coronary artery disease and third level mitral valve prolapse. He urgently needs a heart valve transplant. None of this is at all theoretical, and Suleimanov’s deteriorating health had forced him to curtail his journalist activities for the Crimean Solidarity human rights movement which were almost certainly the reason he was targeted by the FSB.
Suleimanov was arrested on 11 March 2020, together with the two elder sons of a prominent Crimean Tatar historian – Seitumer Seitumerov (1988) and Osman Seitumerov (b. 1992), as well as their maternal uncle –Rustem Seitmemetov (b. 1973).
The FSB had clearly marked out their targets according to journalist or civic activist activities, and appear to have only understood, during Suleimanov’s arrest, that he would not survive detention. He was the first of Russia’s Crimean political prisoners to be ‘only’ placed under house arrest, with this continuing until after the appeal hearing against his 12-year sentence. Unfortunately, it seems likely that any such moves were aimed solely at avoiding the political prisoner’s death before his predetermined conviction. All players since then, including ‘judges’, prosecutors and penal service employees have all focused solely on covering their tracks, as seen with the ‘medical commission’ which, in March 2024, ignored the findings of specialists set out in the same report, and claimed that Suleimanov had no illnesses that precluded detention. More details about the commission and the member who told Suleimanov that he would be released 20 minutes before death here.
As well as multiple calls from the UN General Assembly, OSCE, the EU and other bodies to release all Ukrainian political prisoners, Russia has ignored an important interim decision issued by the United Nations Committee against Torture [CAT] on 22 February 2023. CAT called on Russia to abstain from implementing Suleimanov’s 12-year prison sentence since this would likely result in his death. It asked Russia to ensure that Suleimanov received a comprehensive medical examination in a specialized medical facility and that he underwent heart surgery and/or treatment in accordance with the results of the examination.
All of this has been openly flouted. On 26 June 2024, the Frunze district court in Vladimir rejected an appeal against a ruling from the same court in March 2024 which claimed there to be no grounds for releasing Suleimanov from custody. During the June hearing, the defence produced an expert assessment which confirmed that Suleimanov suffers from two illnesses which preclude imprisonment according to Russia’s own list. Lawyer Lilia Hemedzhy also pointed to the contradictory nature of the ‘medical examination’ illegally carried out by the Penal Service after Suleimanov was moved to the prison in Vladimir. The ‘conclusion’ reached by the ‘doctors’ who signed this ‘expert assessment’, aimed at allowing Suleimanov to be held in prison, was in conflict with the data and conclusions reached by the specialists, including a cardiologist. Hemedzhy stressed that the international classification codes applied by these specialists fully coincide with those illnesses which even Russia acknowledges are incompatible with imprisonment. The court was not, therefore, put in a position where it had to decide which of two medical assessments it should believe, since the findings of the independent assessment, fully coincided with the data and conclusions of the narrow specialists ‘consulted’, but then ignored, for the Penal Service assessment.
Horrific sentences without a crime
Armed arrests without any crime, falsified ‘evidence’ and horrific sentences
The charges against Amet Suleimanov, Rustem Seitmembetov and Seitumer and Osman Seitumerov differed little from the claim of ‘counter-revolutionary terrorist propaganda’, used during Stalin’s Terror to execute the Seitumerov brothers’ great-grandfather. In occupied Crimea, Russia is using a deeply flawed Supreme Court ruling from 2003 to imprison men on ‘terrorism’ charges without even accusing them of a recognizable crime and is targeting journalists and civic activists from the Crimean Tatar human rights movement.
The men are essentially accused only of supposed ‘involvement’ in the peaceful transnational Hizb ut-Tahrir Muslim organization, which is legal in Ukraine and not known to have committed acts of terror anywhere in the world. No proof is even needed of actual involvement in Hizb ut-Tahrir, since the FSB invariably plant ‘prohibited literature’ which they then claim to have found during armed searches which they prevent lawyers from being present at. Illicitly taped and innocuous conversations about religion, Russian persecution, events in Crimea are passed to FSB-‘experts’ who claim that this or that word ‘proves’ involvement in Hizb ut-Tahrir. They also recruit ‘anonymous witnesses’ who invariably repeat the indictment, while proving suspiciously unable to provide any other details about the defendants whom they claim to have known well. All of this is seen and clearly understood by the ‘judges’ who prevent the defence from asking questions which demonstrate that such ‘witnesses’ are lying and that the ‘experts’ have no competence to express an opinion.
Seitumer Seitumerov was charged under the more serious Article 205.5 § 1 of Russia’s criminal code with ‘organizing a Hizb ut-Tahrir group’, while his brother, uncle and Suleimanov were charged with ‘involvement’ in this entirely unproven ‘group’, under Article 205.5 § 2. All of the men were also accused of ‘planning a violent uprising’ (Article 278) although even the FSB admitted that not one of them was suspected of actions or direct plans to commit any action aimed at ‘overthrowing the Russian constitutional order’
Despite the flawed charges, non-existent evidence and the fact that any custodial sentence would kill one of the men, prosecutor Yevgeny Nadolinsky demanded horrific sentences against all four men, including 13 years in the case of Suleimanov (whom he had previously tried to get remanded in custody). On 29 October 2021, three ‘judges’ from the Southern District Military Court in Rostov (Russia) - Igor Kostin (presiding judge); Roman Plisko and Yevgeny Zviagin – largely obliged, sentencing Seitumer Seitumerov to 17 years; Osman Seitumerov to 14 years; Rustem Seitmemetov to 13 years and Amet Suleimanov to 12 years. All of these sentences are for the worst of Russian penal institutions, with the first 3.5 years to be spent in a prison, where the conditions are most shocking.
These sentences were upheld on 9 February 2023, by ‘judge’ Aleksandr Aleksandrovich Mordovin from the Military Court of Appeal in Vlasikha (Moscow region).
Please help ensure that Amet Suleimanov returns to his wife and three sons!
Russia’s criminal procedure code specifically envisages contact between prisoners and the diplomatic representative offices and consular departments of their country in the Russian Federation. Since Ukraine has had no diplomatic relations with Russia since the latter’s full-scale invasion, Ukrainian political prisoners are entitled to contact “with the representative offices or consular institutions of countries which have taken it upon themselves to defend [the prisoner’s] interests, or with inter-state bodies engaged in the defence of such prisoners”.
If you are from or living in an EU country, the USA, Canada or other democratic countries, please ask your foreign ministry to consider playing such a role. It could save Amet Suleimanov’s life.
Please also write letters!
These, unfortunately, need to be in Russian, handwritten, and on ‘safe’ subjects
Address (which can be in Russian or English)
600020 Россия, Владимирская обл., Владимир, Большая Нижегородская ул., 67,
ФКУ Т-2 "Владимирский централ"
Сулейманову, Амету Рефатовичу, г.р. 1984
Or in English
600020 Russia, Vladimir oblast, Vladimir 67 Bolshaya Nizhegorodskaya St, Prison No. 2 ‘Vladimir Central’
Suleimanov, Amet Refatovich, b. 1984
