Bundestag’s Ex-Vice President takes Crimean journalist Asan Akhtemov under her care

While the health of political prisoner Asan Akhtemov is rapidly deteriorating in a russian colony, German politician Katrin Göring-Eckardt has personally intervened in his fate. She has become the journalist’s official mentor in order to give the case international publicity. This is reported by the ZMINA Human Rights Center.

The story of Asan Akhtemov is a story about how a civil activist and journalist became a target for the repressive machine of the occupiers simply for covering the truth about life in Crimea. Today, thousands of kilometers from home in a colony in the city of Koryazhma (Arkhangelsk Oblast of the russian federation), he received unexpected but extremely important support from Europe.

Former Vice President of the Bundestag of Germany Katrin Göring-Eckardt announced the beginning of advocacy mentorship for Asan. For a political prisoner sentenced to 15 years in prison, this means that his name will now be heard on high political platforms in Germany and the EU.

“Our responsibility is to remain on the side of Ukraine and support those who have suffered from the cruel russian regime that imprisons, tortures and oppresses,” the politician wrote on her social networks, emphasizing that she is taking on the mission of political protection for the journalist.

Asan’s path to a russian prison began in September 2021 with a high-profile case of alleged “sabotage” on a gas pipeline. Then the FSB released a video with ‘confessions’, but later Asan was able to convey the truth through an independent lawyer: the testimony was extracted from him through torture, physical and psychological pressure.

Now his stay in the difficult conditions of a russian colony is taking its toll. Relatives and human rights activists are sounding the alarm about the journalist’s health. Asan complains of serious vision problems – his eyes hurt and watery so much that he cannot read for more than 15 minutes. He practically does not receive proper medical care in VK-5.

Asan Akhtemov was detained together with the Deputy Chairman of the Mejlis Nariman Celal. His sentence – 15 years in prison and a huge fine – is an act of intimidation of all citizen journalists on the peninsula.

That is why mentoring initiatives, similar to the step taken by Katrin Göring-Eckardt, remain the only chance to pull the case out of the information vacuum and increase pressure on the aggressor to release the Ukrainian prisoners.

As earlier reported, the Southern District Military Court in Rostov-on-Don, at a meeting on March 17, extended the preventive measure for the defendants in the case of the ‘sixth Bakhchisarai group’ of the Hizb ut-Tahrir organization banned in the russian federation. Public figures Memet Lyumanov, Mustafa Abduramanov and citizen journalists Rustem Osmanov and Aziz Azizov will remain in pre-trial detention until July 7 of this year.