Crimean political prisoner Teymur Abdullaev released from punishment cell after 60 days of isolation

Crimean political prisoner Teymur Abdullaev was taken out of the punishment cell of the penal colony No. 2 in Bashkortostan after two months of detention. This was reported to Crimean Solidarity by his mother Dilyara Abdullaeva.

Abdullaev was placed in the isolation ward on 12 December 2024 for 15 days because he did not interrupt the morning prayers during the visit of the head of the colony. After that, his stay in the isolation ward was repeatedly extended. Only on February 10, the political prisoner was released from the isolation cell, as he informed his family in a letter.

‘This time, I spent 60 days in the isolation ward, and a total of 1009 days in the five years of my stay in the colony,’ Abdullaev wrote, without explaining the reasons for the extension of the isolation period.

After his release from the punishment cell, he was transferred to a cell with strict conditions of detention, where he had been kept before his isolation.

According to Teymur Abdullaev, Muslim Aliev, a defendant in the ‘Yalta group’ in the Hizb ut-Tahrir case, and two other Muslims, who also refused to interrupt the prayer, were placed in the pre-trial detention facility together with him.

‘It [the uninterrupted prayer] obviously hurt his [the head of the CF-2] ego. He got angry and locked us in the punishment cell. We were also forbidden to take the Quran to the cell, arguing that it was forbidden by the local department [of the Federal Penitentiary Service] and because [the Qurans] are in Arabic,’– the political prisoner said.

On 12 October 2016, Russian security forces detained five representatives of the indigenous Crimean Tatar people – Uzeir Abdullaev, Teymur Abdullaev, Rustem Ismailov, Emil Dzhemadenov and Ayder Saledinov – during mass searches in the village of Strohonivka, Simferopol district. They were accused of participating in the Hizb ut-Tahrir organisation, banned in Russia, and charged under Article 205.5 of the Criminal Code (‘organisation of and participation in the activities of a terrorist organisation’).

On 18 June 2019, the North Caucasus District Military Court of the Russian Federation sentenced the defendants in the Simferopol ‘Hizb ut-Tahrir case’. Teymur Abdullaev was sentenced to 17 years in a strict regime colony with a 1-year and 6-month restriction of liberty, Rustem Ismailov – to 14 years, Uzeir Abdullaev – to 13 years, Ayder Saledinov and Emil Dzhemadenov – to 12 years.

On 24 December 2019, the Supreme Court in Moscow reduced the sentences of the defendants in the Simferopol ‘Hizb ut-Tahrir case’ by 6 months.