Kremlin’s political prisoner Osman Arifmemetov receives no medicine

Crimean citizen journalist Osman Arifmemetov, who is serving a sentence on trumped-up charges in VK-5 Novotroitsk (Orenburg Oblast), said that he suffers from pain in his teeth and gums.

No medicine, including ordinary vitamins, can be given to the colony. This was reported to Crimean Solidarity by his mother Emdiie Arifmemetova, who went to visit her son for a long visit.

According to her, Osman has no critical complaints about his detention in the colony, although he is in a strict regime. However, the family does not understand how to resolve the issue of giving him medicine, since the journalist is prohibited from receiving any medications – not only vitamins, but also those necessary for the treatment of other diseases. Even during a visit, the political prisoner’s mother was unable to give him medicine.

The man is currently suffering from pain in his spine and teeth. And if the pain in the spine subsides after doing physical exercises, then the situation with the teeth and gums is more complicated.

In the colony, the political prisoner works to maintain communication with other prisoners and his psychological state. He also helps his cellmate with mathematics, and he, in turn, teaches Arifmemetov English.

Exactly a year ago, the journalist was taken out of the Minusinsk prison in the Krasnoyarsk Krai in stages.

Osman Arifmemetov is a citizen journalist, father of two minor children.

He and other activists were detained on March 27, 2019, in Crimea in the Kamiyanka and Strohanivka neighborhoods of Simferopol. Then, mass searches were simultaneously carried out in dozens of Crimean Tatar houses. Due to the huge amount of materials, law enforcement officers unprecedentedly divided the criminal case with 25 participants into five groups of five defendants. The case was called the “second Simferopol group” of Hizb ut-Tahrir, an Islamic organization banned in russia.

On November 24, 2022, the Southern District Military Court sentenced Osman Arifmemetov to 14 years in prison. The other participants in the case, Enver Ametov and Yashar Muyedinov, were sentenced to 13 years each. Two more citizen journalists, Ruslan Suleymanov and Rustem Sheykhaliyev, were sentenced to 14 years, just like Arifmemetov. According to the verdict, they were to spend the first four years in prison, the rest of the term in a maximum-security colony.

On February 1, 2024, the Vlasykha Military Court of Appeal upheld the sentences of five Crimean Tatar activists.

After being transferred to the Krasnoyarsk Krai, Osman Arifmemetov reported that he had lost 22 kilograms. He noted that in prison all convicts were given pork, which Crimean Tatars do not eat for religious reasons.

The head of the prison’s medical unit allowed Arifmemetov to receive and use only two medications that the family was supposed to give him. The Crimean Tatar was not prescribed any other treatment.