Activist Raim Aivazov, illegally sentenced to 17 years in prison for supporting Crimean political prisoners, was illegally transferred from a jail in Dimitrovgrad, Ulyanovsk region, to the Arkhangelsk region, three thousand kilometers from home.

The Crimean Tatar told his wife that the transfer lasted a long time. He was taken from the prison to the Ulyanovsk detention center, where he stayed for nine days. Raim traveled through Kazan, Perm, and Yaroslavl in the Russian Federation. During this transportation, Raim’s father died, and he never found out where his son was. 

“Unfortunately, my husband is now even further away from home. When he was transferred to prison, I immediately wrote a petition asking that Raim serve his sentence closer to home, but I received a negative response. When Raim’s father died, my husband was transferred. It was hard for him to accept the fact that his father was no longer alive,” says the political prisoner’s wife. 

On March 27, 2019, the most massive searches in the homes of Crimean Muslims in recent decades took place in occupied Crimea. Russian security forces abducted Raim Aivazov at a checkpoint in Armiansk. Raim’s lawyer reported that her client was tortured on the day of his detention. Three other defendants in the case—civic journalists Osman Arifmemetov and Remzi Bekirov, as well as activist Vladlen Abdulkadyrov—said that they were subjected to physical and psychological pressure. The occupiers accuse the man in the so-called case of the “second Simferopol group.”

The Mission condemns the systematic violations of the human rights of Ukrainian citizens by the Russian occupiers and appeals to the international community to respond to the latest crimes of Russia, which does not stop the criminal practice of illegal transfer and quiet deportation of Ukrainian citizens from the temporarily occupied territory of Ukraine, violating the norms of international humanitarian law.