Crimean Tatar journalist Amet Suleimanov has suffered a second hypertensive crisis while imprisoned in a Russian penal facility, according to a statement by his wife, Lilia Liumanova. The first such episode occurred in May 2024, after which doctors diagnosed him with angiopathy—a condition that, if left untreated, may lead to vision loss. Prison staff have systematically ignored requests from Suleimanov and his legal team to provide him with proper medical care.

These days, Amet is experiencing frequent nosebleeds, chest pain, dizziness, worsening vision, and unexplained skin rashes, Lilia Liumanova added.

Since 2020, Amet Suleimanov has been awaiting life-saving heart valve replacement surgery, which he had planned to undergo in Kyiv. After his arrest, he was placed on a waiting list in occupied Crimea. However, in October 2024, Russian authorities removed him from the list on the initiative of the so-called “Ministry of Health of Crimea.”

In July 2024, a Russian court denied Suleimanov’s petition for release, despite the presence of life-threatening conditions and his critically deteriorating health. His lawyer, Lilia Hemedzhi, stressed that under such medical circumstances, the sentence imposed on Suleimanov is, in effect, a death sentence: 

“He was sentenced to death. For a person with such a diagnosis, imprisonment is cynical.”

Previously, Amet Suleimanov was arrested by the Russian occupation administration in March 2020 and sentenced to 12 years in a high-security penal colony on religious grounds.

We call on the international community to urgently address the violations of detention conditions faced by political prisoners, including the denial of medical care and access to essential medications.