Crimean Tatar citizen journalist Ruslan Suleymanov, sentenced to 14 years in prison, was taken to Verkhneuralsk prison in the Chelyabinsk region. According to him, the journey from pre-trial detention center No. 1 in Voronezh took five days by train.
“I changed 10 paddy wagons. At some stations, people walked from the paddy wagon to the “Stolypin” carriage with bags in their hands, all together, fastened with a cable, in formation or on foot. In the carriages, we were taken to the toilet for hours at a time, and boiling water was given to us three times a day,” the prisoner wrote in a letter to his relatives.
Previously, in the pre-trial detention center, Suleymanov repeatedly turned to doctors for help due to congenital heart disease and tachycardia. The doctor came to him only once and suggested motherwort and glycine. The political prisoner refused both drugs.
In 2022, Ruslan Suleymanov was sentenced to 14 years on charges of participation in the Islamic party Hizb ut-Tahrir, banned in the Russian Federation. Since January 2015, in Crimea, which actually came under the control of Russia, criminal cases began to be initiated en masse regarding participation in this organization. In Ukraine and European countries, the party’s activities are not prohibited.
