Russia’s refusal to release even dying Crimean Tatar political prisoners has taken another brutal turn. On 17 April, the Russian Investigative Committee announced new criminal charges against Tofik Abdulgaziev whom Russia sentenced to 14 years for his Crimean Solidarity human rights activism. Tofik has a malignant brain tumour which, even according to Russian legislation, means he should have been released months ago. Instead, the gravely ill man was forced to sign a supposed ‘clean bill of health’ and has now been charged with ‘contempt of court’ for expressing indignation in court over the methods used.
Crimean Solidarity reported the new charges on 18 April, citing renowned lawyer Emil Kurbedinov. He explained that the court had, on 17 April, been due to examine the application for Abdulgaziev’s release. This should have been virtually automatic since Tofik Abdulgaziev’s diagnosis is on the list of illnesses which preclude detention.
Instead, the ‘judge’ announced that she was recusing herself and was lodging a complaint of criminal behaviour against Abdulgaziev. Kurbedinov has now been informed by an official from the Investigative Committee that criminal charges have been laid against Abdulgaziev under Article 297 § 2 of Russia’s criminal code (‘contempt of court’). This was supposedly because Abdulgaziev had expressed his opinion in strong terms during the previous hearing.
Although Kurbedinov did not go into details, it seems clear that this was the hearing about which Tofik’s wife, Aliye Kurtametova wrote on 5 March 2026. The hearing on the application for his release had originally been scheduled to take place in January this year at a district court in Chelyabinsk. It had, however, been postponed for a month, until 27 February. After hearing nothing from her husband, Aliye managed to contact the lawyer representing him and discovered that Abdulgaziev had been removed from the court at the beginning of the hearing. She was openly incredulous at the suggestion that her husband could have behaved badly towards the panel of judges, with this confirmed when Abdulgaziev managed to call her that evening.
He explained that the day before the hearing, he had been taken to a gathering of prison doctors, attended also by individuals from Russia’s FSB. The court had asked the prison hospital to provide an assessment of Tofik Abdulgaziev’s state of health. Before even pretending to carry out an examination, Olga Anvarovna Angold, chief medical officer of Prison tuberculosis hospital No, 3 in Chelyabinsk, thrust a document in front of Tofik Abdulgaziev and demanded that he sign it. As reported, it was the sharp deterioration in Tofik’s eyesight in October 2025 that first aroused fears of a brain tumour and Angold was doubtless well aware that he would be unable to read it. He asked that the document be read out to him, which she refused to allow, saying “sign and then you’ll find out”. He initially refused to sign any document without knowing what it said, however the prison staff began pressurizing him and Angold became far ruder and more aggressive than when he had seen her earlier. He was in an extremely weak state, suffering from appalling headaches, and, after holding out for some time, finally signed the document “to end this circus”.
It was only in the courtroom that he learned that the document claimed that the prison hospital ‘doctors’ had concluded that Tofik Abdulgaziev is entirely healthy and that he had no objection or complaints if he was moved back from the prison hospital to a normal cell. It transpired that Olga Anvarovna Angold and her ‘doctor’ colleagues who, in December 2025, took a CT scan and tests, and found that Tofik Abdulgaziev was suffering from a malignant brain tumour, were now willing, under pressure from the FSB, to write him a ‘clean bill of health’.
While unclear what Tofik Abdulgaziev said in court, it was absolutely understandable that he was angry and that he needed to expose such a cynical deception, one aimed at ensuring that he dies in captivity, thousands of kilometres from his family. This is a lie that all are complicit in, since Tofik’s very appearance will make it quite clear that he is in an extremely bad state and needs to be released.
Tofik Abdulgaziev (b. 19 June 1982) was in good health until 27 March 2019 when he was targeted in Russia’s worst attack to date on the Crimean Solidarity human rights movement. He has been imprisoned ever since, first in occupied Crimea, then in Russia.
While unclear what causes a brain tumour, Abdulgaziev’s state of health was already gravely compromised because of medical conditions directly linked with his imprisonment in the appalling conditions of Russian penal institutions. He was moved, in July 2023, to the Verkhneuralsk Prison in Chelyabinsk oblast, 2,700 kilometres from his home and family in Crimea. It was after the gruelling journey that he began losing weight and complaining of acute joint pain. By February 2024, Emil Kurbedinov reported that he was unable to move about and that he had difficulty even holding a spoon.
He has been in prison tuberculosis hospital No, 3 in Chelyabinsk since March 2024, and was, on 22 March 2024, placed in a critical care ward in a grave state. By the time his family were allowed to see him, he had lost around 40 kilograms and was gaunt and frail. In late April 2024, he was diagnosed with what was then identified simply as tuberculosis, but was clearly a very form, namely disseminated tuberculosis of the lungs, with this having spread to the chest lymph nodes. The doctors also found a number of other serious, some life-threatening conditions - double pneumonia; fluid in the lungs; medium severity anaemia; connective tissue dysplasia with damage to the mitral valve (valvular heart disease); chronic heart failure; chronic gastritis and kidney stones.
It was entirely clear over a year ago that Abdulgaziev should be released on health grounds, but the same, even then, was true of a number of other political prisoners who had died in captivity, including Dzhemil Gafarov, whose detention even Russian regulations prohibit, and Kostiantyn Shyrinh.
Although especially shameful now, this was not the first fake document used in Tofik Abdulgaziev’s case. In the middle of 2024, the prosecution organized its own supposed expert assessment which claimed that Abdulgaziev did not have illnesses that could prevent him from remaining in prison, with this used to justify a formal refusal to comply with Russia’s own legislation and free him.
Tofik Abdulgaziev and Aliye have three children – Amar (b. 2005); Medina (b. 2010) and Yarmina (2015) and were also bringing up Aliye’s daughter, Sayire from her first marriage. Although it was clear by 2019 that all human rights activists were in danger, Tofik Abdulgaziev refused to look the other way, as repressed mounted. He played an active role both in Crimean Solidarity, and in the linked Crimean Childhood organization, which particularly provides support to the children of political prisoners. Abdulgaziev actively visited political trials, organized parcels for political prisoners, was sound operator for recordings, and organized activities for children traumatized by the armed raids and arrests of their fathers.
He and his family were subjected to a first armed search on 4 May 2017, with such methods used by the FSB as a ‘first warning’. It was one that Abdulgaziev could not heed
The FSB came back for Abdulgaziev on 27 March 2019, together with 24 other Crimean Tatar civic journalists and activists. This was the worst attack to date on Crimean Solidarity and the Crimean Tatar human rights movement in general and was evidently aimed at silencing men involved in highlighting repression and helping the victims of persecution in occupied Crimea and the arrests received international condemnation. Human Rights Watch called the arrests “an unprecedented move to intensify pressure on a group largely critical of Russia’s occupation of the Crimean Peninsula” and stated unequivocally that attempts “to portray politically active Crimean Tatars as terrorists” is aimed at silencing them. There was similar criticism from the EU ; Freedom House and Civil Rights Defenders, and the US State Department. The Memorial Human Rights Centre was swift to declare all the men political prisoners and denounce the attempt “to crush the Crimean Tatar human rights movement”.
All of the men were charged only with ‘involvement’ in the Hizb ut-Tahrir movement, a peaceful transnational Muslim organization which is legal in Ukraine and not known to have carried out acts of terrorism anywhere in the world. Russia has never provided any grounds for its highly secretive 2003 Supreme Court ruling that declared Hizb ut-Tahrir ‘terrorist’, yet this inexplicable ruling is now being used as justification for huge sentences on supposed ‘terrorism charges’. Five of the men faced the more serious charge of ‘organizing’ a Hizb ut-Tahrir group (Article 205.5 § 1 of Russia’s criminal code), while the others, including Abdulgaziev were accused of ‘taking part’ in such an unproven group. The aggressor state, which invaded and annexed Crimea also charged the 25 Ukrainian citizens with “planning a violent seizure of power and change in Russia’s constitutional order” (Article 278).
The prosecution claimed that the ‘proof’ to back these charges came from innocuous discussions about religion, politics, courage which were illicitly taped back in early 2016. Three years elapsed before the FSB carried out the arrests, making the ‘terrorism’ charges seem especially preposterous. Faulty transcripts of these conversations were sent to FSB-loyal ‘experts’ who are chosen for their willingness to ‘find’ whatever the FSB demands of them. The defence obtained independent expert assessments by people actually qualified in their field. Their analysis of the supposed expert assessments was damning, but ignored by the court.
As in all of these ‘trials’, the judges collaborated with prosecutor Yury Konstantinovich Nesterov in allowing anonymous or secret witnesses despite the lack of any evidence that these ‘witnesses’ would be in danger if they testified openly. There is considerable evidence that ‘anonymous witnesses’ are often people who have themselves been tortured and / or threatened with imprisonment if they do not collaborate with the FSB. It is invariably these alleged witnesses who claim to have heard the defendants admit to being members of Hizb ut-Tahrir , or similar. They almost always claim to remember particular ‘incriminating conversations’ while demonstrating total ‘amnesia’ about everything else. In the last report on occupied Crimea from UN Secretary General Antonio Guterres , there was particular criticism of Russian convictions based almost exclusively on anonymous testimony, and of the role played by Russian judges in upholding such practice and preventing the defence from exposing the flaws in this alleged ‘testimony’.
Russia split the 25 political prisoners into five groups, staging the same cloned ‘trial’ with each. Tofik Abdulgaziev was found ‘guilty’ on 12 May 2022, together with four other civic activists: Bilyal Adilov (b. 1970); Vladlen Abdulkadyrov (b. 1979): Izet Abdullayev (b. 1986),; and Medzhit Abdurakhmanov (b. 1975). Presiding judge Rizvan Zubairov, together with Maxim Nikitin and Roman Saprunov from the Southern District Military Court sentenced Adilov to 14 years; Abdulgaziev and the other men to 12 years. In all cases the first five years were to be in a prison, the worst of all Russia’s penal institutions. These monstrous sentences against innocent men were upheld on 17 May 2023 by ‘judge’ Anatoly Solin and two colleagues from the Military court of appeal in Vlasikha (Moscow region).
The new charge of contempt of court carries a (massive) fine of 200 thousand roubles, or 480 hours of compulsory work; or two years ‘corrective labour’ or six months’ imprisonment. Although the charge does not envisage a new prison sentence, it would be likely in this case to increase the sentence.
It is a sentence that Tofik Abdulgaziev cannot survive. Please help publicize this monstrous torture of a man who is imprisoned for his integrity and unwillingness to remain silent about Russia’s violations.
