Today we tell the story of Crimean Tatar Ruslan Abdurakhmanov, whom the occupiers illegally sentenced to 5 years in a maximum security colony.

Life before the detention

Ruslan Abdurakhmanov was born on February 12, 1991, in the village of Azovske in the Henichesk district of the Kherson region, where he lived with his family.

What did the occupiers come up with?

On May 22, 2022, Russian security forces raided the occupied village of Azovske in the Genichesk district of the Kherson region, abducting Ruslan Abdurakhmanov and taking him to an unknown destination. The occupiers accused the man of allegedly participating in the Anti-Terrorist Operation in eastern Ukraine in 2016.  

“In front of my two children and my wife, they hit me, I fell, and they started kicking me. There were about seven people. Then they put a black garbage bag over my head, wrapped my head with tape, dragged me out, and put me in a car.”

After his detention, Abdurakhmanov was subjected to brutal interrogations with the use of torture on the premises of the vocational school №17 in Genichesk. From there, he was forcibly transferred to Simferopol, to the Federal Security Service of the Russian Federation building, where interrogations continued under constant psychological pressure and threats of physical violence. Persuasion, threats, and intimidation directed at both him and his family forced Abdurakhmanov to confess to fabricated charges. 

“They brought me to the torture chamber and brought me down to the basement. They put me in a corner with my hands and eyes blindfolded. It smelled like cadaveric poison. Then three people with Chechen accents came, put me on the floor, pulled out knives, and threatened to cut off my genitals. Then they tortured me with electricity and beat me. They threatened to do the same to my family. Then an older man came in and said that one of the prisoners had already been killed, that he should be taken off the gallows and buried.”

On August 9, 2022, the so-called “court” in Simferopol passed a verdict, sentencing Abdurakhmanov to five years in a maximum security colony.

Why was Ruslan Abdurakhmanov actually detained?

Like many other Crimean Tatars, Ruslan Abdurakhmanov became a victim of persecution by the occupation administration because of his ethnicity. This is part of the systematic policy of discrimination and harassment of the Crimean Tatar people, aimed at suppressing their culture, language, and identity.

Where is Ruslan Abdurakhmanov now?

After the sentence, Ruslan was kept in the Simferopol Pre-trial Detention Center No. 2. Four other people were in the cell with him. All of them were forbidden to sit on their beds during the day, which created additional physical and psychological stress. Every day, the cell was searched, violating the privacy of the prisoners and contributing to an atmosphere of constant stress.

Ruslan Abdurakhmanov was not given the necessary medicines and was not allowed to go for walks, which negatively affected his physical condition and spirit. He needs surgery to remove three hernias in his cervical spine, which caused him to have seizures, microstrokes, and limb failure.

Until recently, Abdurakhmanov was held in the Verkhnouralsk prison in the Chelyabinsk region of Russia.

Currently, Abdurakhmanov is held in colony No. 5 in the city of Michurinsk, Tambov region, more than 1,000 kilometers from Crimea.