By Murad Rakhimov | 2026-05-08

Three men who were dying faced the same paradox: a Russian court ruled their illnesses severe enough to warrant release, then reversed course and sent them back to prison. One had terminal liver cancer. One was completely blind. A third had active tuberculosis and later developed a brain tumor.

This is how medical parole works in occupied Crimea. Article 81 of Russia's Criminal Code gives courts the authority to release prisoners with serious illnesses. In practice, prosecutors override trial court decisions on appeal, and the seriously ill go back to their cells. Three Crimean political prisoners -- Konstantin Shiring, Dzhemil Gafarov and Rustem Verati -- died in custody in the past year alone after receiving inadequate medical care.

A law that doesn't work

Lenur Khalilov, 58, is a Crimean Tatar imam with terminal liver cancer. He was convicted for membership in Hizb ut-Tahrir, an Islamic party banned in Russia but legal in several other countries. A trial court ordered his release. The prosecutor's office did not object. He went home and began chemotherapy.

Then the prosecutor's office changed its position. An appeals court overturned the release. Authorities removed Khalilov from his home, not from a courtroom, and returned him to the penal colony without his medications. Prosecutors argued that the "nature of the crime," perceived "public danger" and disciplinary infractions outweigh the medical diagnosis.

Alexander Sizikov, 41, is classified as a Group I disabled person, the most severe category under Russian law, and is completely blind. A court ruled prison conditions incompatible with his disability, then overturned that ruling on appeal. As with Khalilov, the prosecutor's office first supported release and then opposed it.

Tofik Abdulgaziev, 44, entered prison with severe tuberculosis. Two years later, he has a brain tumor, failing vision, memory loss, and incoherent speech. Two of his conditions appear on Russia's official list of illnesses that preclude incarceration. An independent medical assessment supported release. The court dismissed it in favor of a state-issued report declaring him healthy.

"The existing anti-terrorism legislation already had significant loopholes. The norms providing for the release of people from punishment due to illness simply do not work," Crimean lawyer Nazim Sheikhmambetov told Kontur.

Sent to the far end of Russia

The medical situation compounds a geographic one. Russian authorities routinely transfer Crimean political prisoners to Buryatia, Yakutia, Tuva and the Murmansk, Arkhangelsk and Irkutsk regions -- areas with harsh climates dramatically different from Crimea. The distances are staggering. Servet Gaziev, a 65-year-old veteran and community activist who suffered a stroke that paralyzed his arm and part of his face, was transferred to Kamchatka, more than 12,000 kilometers (roughly 7,500 miles) from Crimea.

Sheikhmambetov noted that Amed Suleymanov, who has heart problems and a Group II disability classification, remains imprisoned despite the court citing his health condition as a factor when placing him under house arrest during the investigation. After sentencing, authorities transferred him to a penal colony.

Yashar Shikhametov, 55, who has several severe chronic illnesses, sought medical release. The trial court rejected the request outright.

'A defining trait of Putin's Russia'

Eskender Bariev, head of the board of the Crimean Tatar Resource Center (CTRC) and a member of the Mejlis of the Crimean Tatar People, frames the pattern in legal terms. Russia's refusal to provide adequate medical care or consider release for seriously ill prisoners violates Articles 2 and 3 of the European Convention on Human Rights (ECHR), he said -- the right to life and the prohibition of inhuman treatment.

"This is no longer a matter of individual errors. It is a systemic trend of a police state," Bariev told Kontur. "When the system ignores suffering, punitive logic supplants humanism -- a defining trait of modern Putin's Russia."

Russia withdrew from the Council of Europe in 2022, closing off the European Court of Human Rights (ECHR) as an avenue for redress. That leaves United Nations (UN) mechanisms, specifically the Committee Against Torture and the Human Rights Committee, as the remaining international recourse.

The defense teams for Khalilov and Sizikov have already filed complaints with the UN. Both committees issued decisions and formally raised the cases with the Russian government. Both men remain in prison.

Dmitry Dubrovsky of the Faculty of Social Sciences at Charles University in Prague said the pattern is unambiguous.

"When authorities keep someone behind bars despite them being in their final days or gravely ill, it provides grounds for an appeal to the UN Human Rights Committee. Today, this is the only avenue left for Russian citizens to address such issues," Dubrovsky told Kontur.