25 October 2025
Amet Suleimanov marks another birthday behind the bars
Today, on October 25, the 41st birthday of Crimean Tatar political prisoner and activist Amet Suleimanov will not be spent among his family and friends but in the cold cell of the Vladimir Central Prison.
Amet Suleimanov was born on October 25, 1984, in Urgut, Samarkand Region, Uzbekistan. He and his family were able to return to Crimea only in 1991. He grew up in the village of Kholmivka in the Bakhchysarai district, went to school there, and graduated in 1999. After school, Amet entered a madrasa in Simferopol — from where he was invited to continue his studies in Turkey. However, due to heart problems that had troubled him since his youth, his parents had to decline the opportunity. In 2001, he began studying at the Bakhchysarai Construction Lyceum, where he trained as a carpenter.
Until 2004, Amet worked in his trade and later became a manager at a mobile phone store, where he sold gadgets, stationery, and handled technical documentation. In 2005, he married Lilia, and together they raised four children. The youngest son was born just three weeks after the occupying security forces conducted an illegal search in their home.
As early as 2007, doctors diagnosed Amet with heart failure and the need for a valve replacement. He received treatment in Kyiv and Simferopol and was granted Group III disability status. But the occupation destroyed his plans for surgery and consistent medical care.
Amet’s public activism began with his participation in the Crimean Solidarity movement — he became one of the activists documenting repression and illegal “trials” against Crimean Tatars. He recorded searches, detentions, and court hearings involving his fellow citizens, striving to reveal the truth to the world. In October 2017, he was detained for filming the occupiers near the home of Seyran Saliev and fined 15,000 rubles. On October 22, 2019, he was detained again — this time on the so-called “Kerch Bridge” while returning from a “court hearing” in Russia.
On March 11, 2020, the FSB carried out yet another search in his home, after which Amet was arrested and accused of allegedly “participating in a terrorist organization.” He was then placed under house arrest.
Despite his disability, in 2021 the occupiers sentenced Amet to 12 years in a maximum-security colony, and in April 2023 he was transferred to the Vladimir Central Prison.
Even though he suffers from severe arterial and mitral heart valve insufficiency — a condition that, even under Russian law, should exclude imprisonment — Amet remains behind bars. Back in 2019, doctors were preparing him for surgery, but instead of treatment, he has spent years enduring pain, shortness of breath, and repeated hypertensive crises. In 2024, his condition worsened sharply, but the appeals of his family and lawyers have gone unanswered.
October 25 is more than just a date. It is a reminder that people remain imprisoned in Russian jails for telling the truth. Amet Suleimanov and dozens of other political prisoners are suffering right now because of injustice and the deliberate cruelty of the occupiers — their voices deserve to be heard.
Support those who continue to endure captivity — write letters, share their stories, speak their names aloud. Each of them is not only an individual fate but a part of the collective struggle of an entire people — for dignity, freedom, and the right to remain human.