Life before the detention
Akim Ekremovych Bekirov was born on October 18, 1988, in the city of Fergana, Uzbekistan, where his family — along with thousands of other Crimean Tatars — had been deported by the Soviet regime in 1944.
In 1992, the Bekirov family returned to Crimea and settled in the Kurman district. At the age of seven, Akim began first grade at the Chernovska Secondary School, where he completed all 11 grades.
In 2006, he enrolled at the Simferopol College of Construction and Computer Technologies, majoring in Computer Science. He later continued his studies at the Faculty of Mathematics at Vernadskyi Tavrida National University, but had to take an academic leave due to family circumstances and begin working.
Akim worked as a construction worker on various sites to support his family. In 2017, he got married. The couple has two underage children: a daughter, Sumaia, born on February 7, 2018, and a son, Saifullakh, who was born after his father’s arrest on August 25, 2019.
Persecution
Akim Bekirov was an active participant in the civic movement, particularly the Crimean Solidarity initiative. He supported families of political prisoners, worked on IT security, organized aid deliveries to detention centers, attended and reported on court hearings, and livestreamed legal proceedings. As an activist, he became a prominent figure in Crimea’s human rights community, attracting increased attention from the occupying security forces. Before his arrest, he repeatedly noticed surveillance of himself and his home.
On 27 March 2019, Russian occupying forces detained Akim Bekirov following large-scale raids on the homes of Crimean Tatars in the Kamianka and Strohanivka neighborhoods of Simferopol. These were the largest mass detentions on the peninsula since the beginning of the occupation — at least 25 residents were arrested. Security officers denied access to lawyers, failed to present warrants, confiscated phones, and forbade families from informing the public. These actions violated fundamental human rights standards.
Behind the bars
On 18 March 2022, a court in Rostov-on-Don, Russia, found Akim Bekirov guilty on fabricated charges of alleged participation in a terrorist organization and preparation for the violent seizure of power. He was sentenced to 14 years in a penal colony, including 5 years to be served in prison, followed by 1 year of restricted freedom after release.
On 7 July 2023, the occupying administration denied his appeal.
After the trial, Akim Bekirov was held for some time in Pre-Trial Detention Center No. 1 in Novocherkassk, Rostov Region. On 26 August of the same year, the political prisoner was transferred — together with two other Crimean Tatars, Rustem Seitakhalilov and Asan Yanikov — to a transit detention facility in Volgograd.
All three were transported in a special railcar designed for prisoner transfers, under harsh conditions, with poor ventilation and severely limited access to the outside world.
In September 2023, Akim Bekirov was placed in a prison in Russia’s Saratov Region, more than 1,500 kilometers from Crimea.
By October 2024, it became known that he had been transferred to Penal Colony No. 1 in Tsyvilsk, located in the Chuvash Republic of the Russian Federation. While this move slightly reduced the distance to Crimea, Akim remains thousands of kilometers from his home. His lawyers have repeatedly petitioned the Russian Federal Penitentiary Service to transfer the political prisoner closer to where his family resides, but the responses were either purely formal or entirely ignored.