Russia has revoked Ekrem Mamedov’s citizenship, with this meaning that, even having served an illegal 8.5-year sentence, the Crimean Tatar will be unable to return to Crimea while it remains under Russian occupation. Russia is already threatening two other Crimean Tatar political prisoners with deportation to Uzbekistan, and there are strong grounds for fearing that it will use such methods against other Crimean political prisoners, imprisoned for their civic position or religious independence. It was fifty years after the 1944 Deportation of the entire Crimean Tatar people from their homeland that Crimean Tatars were finally able to return. Russia’s repression since its invasion in 2014 and the political prisoners’ effective deportation to the Russian Federation already seemed like a bitter repetition of that most terrible crime, now it appears to be going even further.
Ekrem Mamedov is a 39-year-old businessman from Simferopol. He is married, with six young children who saw their father taken away after armed Russian enforcement officers burst into their home at dawn on 18 July 2024.
Zarema Barieva from the Crimean Tatar Resource Centre [CTRC] reports that the charges against Mambetov were fabricated. They were backed, she says, by fake witnesses. In the vast majority of cases reported here, the identity of such ‘witnesses’ is kept secret describe the lack of any grounds for believing that they would be in danger if their identity were known. Russian and occupation ‘courts’ invariably block questions from the defence aimed at demonstrating that these supposed ‘secret witnesses’ are lying.
The FSB claimed that some money transfers which Mambetov had made in 2020 as part of his business activities had been “to finance the activities of an illegal armed formation’, purportedly part of the so-called ‘Islamic State’ and active in Syria.
Living in Crimea until 2014, they had no idea, Zarema Barieva notes drily, that every second home was a hotbed of ‘terrorists’ or ‘extremists’ of various types, from supposed members of the peaceful Muslim organization Hizb ut-Tahrir which is legal in Ukraine to Jehovah’s Witnesses. Even were Russia not in violation of international law through its application of its legislation on occupied territory, there would be other grounds for scepticism, not least Russia’s repeated attempts to slander world-renowned Crimean Tatar leaders, like Mustafa Dzhemilev, through preposterous attempts to link them with ‘Islamic State’ terrorists.
Mamedov was charged with ‘abetting terrorist activities’ under Article 205.1 § 1 of Russia’s criminal code. He was sentenced by an occupation ‘court’ on 23 October 2024 to eight and a hard years’ maximum-security imprisonment, with the first two years in a prison, the worst of Russia’s penal institutions. He has been imprisoned in Russia since April 2025 and learned, while in the notorious Vladimir prison in Russia, that a ‘decision’ had been taken on 26 May 2025, to strip him of his citizenship. Russia has made it impossible to live on occupied territory, to receive medical care for the family, etc., without taking Russian citizenship. It is now weaponizing such citizenship still further, with it likely that he will simply not be able to return to his home and family after the sentence.
As reported, Russia is also threatening at least two Crimean Tatars political prisoners: Nasrulla Seidaliev and Lenur Seidametov with deportation after their illegal sentences. It is using the fact that the two men were born in Uzbekistan (as were very many descendants of the Crimean Tatar victims of the 1944 Deportation, as threatened excuse for sending them to a country to which they have no attachment. Details here: Russia threatens Crimean Tatar political prisoners with deportation to Uzbekistan
