26-year-old Mamut Belyalov, who is already serving a 12-year sentence on fabricated charges, has been brought back to occupied Crimea and subjected to so-called ‘interrogation’ in the form of savage beating, without a lawyer present. This is the second time that Russia has used torture against the young Crimean Tatar political prisoner, with the fear clearly that new criminal charges are being concocted.
Mamut Belyalov was just 24 when he was seized by the Russian FSB on 10 September 2022 and accused of planning to kill Vadym Volchenko while the latter was the Russian-installed ‘tourism minister’. This was one of a long series of such alleged ‘plots’ which the FSB have claimed to have ‘thwarted’ since Russia’s invasion and annexation of Crimea. All of them are based solely, or almost entirely, on ‘confessions’ extracted through various forms of torture and threats. On many occasions, the victims have recounted being forced to take a grenade or gun in their hands, as well as to provide DNA without a lawyer present, in order to fabricate ‘material evidence’.
Although the Crimean Tatar Resource Centre now receives information from Mamut’s family, his situation originally came to light thanks to Nariman Dzhelyal, Crimean Tatar Mejlis leader, journalist and, until 24 August 2024, Moscow’s most famous Ukrainian political prisoner. In March 2023, Dzhelyal wrote about Belyalov, describing him as the latest victim of Russian law enforcement bodies’ lawlessness in Crimea. He explained that the young Crimean Tatar had been seized on 10 September 2022 and had been subjected to savage torture to get him to ‘confess’ to the supposed attempt on the life of Volchenko.
Mamut had recounted how he had been in the ninth grade in 2014. After Russia’s invasion and annexation of Crimea, the new occupation ‘administration’ appeared at school and told the students that they needed to get new, Russian, citizenship. Mamut refused. Feeling unable to remain in occupied Crimea, in 2017 he entered Kherson State Agrarian University and, on graduating, found work according to his profession at a Kherson farm.
He returned to Crimea for family reasons in September 2021. He had planned to leave within a couple of months, however, following the death of his grandfather, he remained at home, finding work on construction sites.
He was detained on 10 September 2022 and charged the following day with attempted murder under several parts of Article 105 § 2 and Article 30 of Russia’s criminal code. It was claimed that, in the summer of 2022, somebody from Ukraine identified only as ‘Ilya’ had decided to kill the ‘tourism minister’. He had, purportedly, enlisted Ihor Tyshchenko to directly carry out the killing, and Belyalov to find a weapon and pass “remuneration” to Tyshchenko. The latter is a standard part of such cases with Russia’s FSB eager, on the one hand, to claim that somebody was “working for Ukraine”, while on the other, present this as having been for mercenary motives, not out of patriotism.
Belyalov was subjected to horrific torture, including through electric currents, beatings, and threats of rape which they would video and post on the Internet. They also tried to get him to provide ‘testimony’ against one or other person whom they would accuse of involvement in Hizb ut-Tahrir or the Jehovah’s Witnesses.
On 23 September, 2024, before ‘prosecutor’ Oleksandr Dombrovsky, the occupation ‘Kievsky district court’ in Simferopol under ‘judge Mykhailo Bilousov found Belyalov ‘guilty’ of possessing a weapon and of a plan to kill Vadym Volchenko. With particular cynicism, Volchenko lodged a civil suit demanding one million roubles in ‘moral compensation’. As well as the 12-year sentence in a maximum-security prison colony, Belyalov was ordered to pay the million roubles, as well as a fine of 350 thousand roubles.
After the sentence, Belyalov was illegally taken from Crimea to prison colony No. 19 in Volgograd. He was given no explanation for why he was being brought back to Crimea, and the ‘interrogation’ / torture session suggest very serious grounds for concern.
