Ruslan Mamedov, brother of Crimean political prisoner Ekrem Mamedov, spoke in detail about his brother’s detention and persecution during a press conference held by the Crimean Tatar Resource Center to present an analysis of human rights violations in occupied Crimea for the first nine months of 2025, emphasizing the feeling of complete hopelessness in which the family found itself.
According to him, investigators openly pressured Ekrem, demanding that he “confess” to crimes he did not commit.
“The investigator said outright that he knew my brother was innocent, but that there was an order from Moscow to imprison him at any cost. They said that even if he didn’t confess, the sentence had already been decided: from 16 years to life imprisonment. And if he agreed to cooperate, they promised him one to four years,” – said Ruslan Mamedov .
As a result, despite the lack of evidence, in October, Ekrem Mamedov was sentenced to 8.5 years in prison.
It should be recalled that the occupiers arrested Ekrem on July 18, 2024, in the temporarily occupied Crimea. On the basis of a fabricated charge, supported by the testimony of yet another false witness, he was charged under Part 1. Article 205.1 of the Criminal Code of the Russian Federation, sentencing him on October 23, 2024, to 8 years and 6 months, with the first 2 years to be served in prison and the remainder of the sentence in a strict regime penal colony.
The reason for initiating criminal proceedings was money transfers made in the course of business activities in 2020, but the FSB decided that this was nothing more than financing the activities of illegal armed groups belonging to the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL) operating in the Syrian Arab Republic.