{"id":112038,"date":"2024-11-06T13:05:38","date_gmt":"2024-11-06T10:05:38","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/theukrainians.org\/ernes-ametov\/"},"modified":"2025-01-13T12:44:27","modified_gmt":"2025-01-13T09:44:27","slug":"ernes-ametov-why-did-they-choose-our-door","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/dev.theukrainians.org\/en\/ernes-ametov-why-did-they-choose-our-door\/","title":{"rendered":"Ernes Ametov: \u201cWhy Did They Choose Our Door?\u201d"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

Ernes Ametov is a citizen journalist.  <\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Ametov was born on May 30, 1985, in Tashkent, Uzbekistan. In 1992, his family returned to Crimea, settling in the city of Bakhchysarai. He graduated from Taurida National University with a degree in law. Ernes is married to Eleonora Ametova, and they have two sons.<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

On October 11, 2017, armed FSB officers stormed the Ametov household and conducted a search. Ametov was arrested, but three years later, the court acquitted him. However, two years after his acquittal, he was charged under Part 2 of Article 205.5 of the Russian Criminal Code for alleged \u201cparticipation in the activities of a terrorist organization\u201d and Part 1 of Article 30 and Article 278 for alleged \u201cactions aimed at the forcible seizure of power,\u201d and sentenced to eleven years in a penal colony plus one year of restriction of freedom.<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Ametov is the grandnephew of pilot Amet-khan Sultan, a hero of the Crimean Tatar people.<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u00a7\u00a7\u00a7<\/p>\n\n\n\n

With this narrative portrait, we launch a special project dedicated to the free voices of Crimea. This series of stories about journalists, now political prisoners, is a joint initiative of PEN Ukraine, The Ukrainians Media, ZMINA, and Vivat, supported by NED<\/em>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u00a7\u00a7\u00a7<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cCalm down, it\u2019s the FSB.\u201d<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cFire! Open the door!\u201d somebody shouted. A loud knock and ruckus followed as people in uniforms burst into the Ametov family\u2019s apartment during their morning prayer. Eleonora noticed her hands trembling from fear while she prayed, and when she saw a dozen Russian officers pointing guns at her and her husband, memories of her grandfather’s stories about the 1944 deportation flooded back. \u201cThey\u2019re here to kill us,\u201d she thought. \u201cCalm down, it\u2019s the FSB,\u201d said Ametov, noticing Eleonora\u2019s panic.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The raid on the Ametov home took place on October 11, 2017. That day, Ernes Ametov was arrested. He became one of the eight defendants in the second Bakhchysarai group of the Hizb ut-Tahrir case. The search lasted nearly five hours. Eleonora recalls feeling like the officers were deliberately dragging out the process, going through each document and confiscating some books\u2014though they later returned them because they were not on Russia\u2019s list of banned literature. Curiously, they did not search the kitchen.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Ametov was taken from their home while Eleonora stepped away to change clothes. \u201cWe jumped into the car and followed him. I remember being so worried they\u2019d kidnap him, that he\u2019d \u2018disappear.\u2019 And the day after the search, there was a trial,\u201d Eleonora recalls.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The Ametovs have two sons, Aladin and Imran. At the time of the search, the eldest was eight, and the youngest was five. \u201cAladin woke up early before they knocked on our door and hid in the couch. Ernes asked him what he was doing, and our son said he was scared. It was like he sensed something.\u201d When the officers began the search, they advised the Ametov children, \u201cDon\u2019t be afraid, just turn on some cartoons.\u201d While the search was underway, Eleonora went into the kitchen to make porridge for her children. After the arrest, Imran kept asking his mother, \u201cWhy did they choose our door?\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Eleonora and Ernes met through a mutual acquaintance: Eleonora\u2019s childhood friend and Ernes\u2019s classmate. A month after their first meeting, Ametov proposed at the Khan\u2019s Palace. \u201cIt felt like a scene from a movie. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

He tied a string to my finger and slid a ring down it. He said beautiful words, that his life was in faith, in serving God, and he was inviting me into his life to make me happy.<\/strong><\/p><\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n

Our first Kurban-Bayram together. I wasn\u2019t practicing Islam then, just following traditions. In the morning, I woke up to a huge bouquet of roses. My husband said, \u2018We don\u2019t celebrate typical holidays like International Women\u2019s Day or Valentine\u2019s Day, but you\u2019ll always get flowers without needing a reason.\u2019 That\u2019s how our family life began: pure, beautiful, and right,\u201d Eleonora says.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

“He wasn\u2019t eating bread so he could make me a gift.”<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Eleonora\u2019s birthday was three months after Ametov\u2019s arrest. At that time, he was in a Simferopol pre-trial detention center. \u201cOn the morning of my birthday, someone rang the doorbell. My children and I were scared at first, thinking it was another search. I opened the door and saw flowers and a card. The delivery person passed along some warm wishes from Ernes, saying my husband loved me very much. I was shocked.\u201d Eleonora says that every birthday since her husband\u2019s imprisonment, he\u2019s managed to send her flowers. One time, she even received a rose made from bread that Ametov crafted in prison. Later, he told her that he had been saving his bread from prison rations to make her a gift.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Eleonora shares that her husband has always had a knack for making things with his hands: \u201cRight after we got married, he installed internet cables. Later, he made custom built-in wardrobes and became passionate about working with cezves. He made brass cezves for coffee by hand. His work caught the attention of others, and he was invited to train in this craft in Turkey, but Ernes declined because he didn\u2019t want to leave our family. He took a photography course, and we started filming weddings together and making wedding decorations. He inspired me to start a YouTube channel and film videos.\u201d Eleonora adds that Ametov is a trained lawyer, though he never worked in his profession.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Ametov was shocked by the arrest of Rustem Abiltarov, a defendant in the first Bakhchysarai group of the Hizb ut-Tahrir case. Abiltarov was a good friend of his. Eleonora recalls the moment she and her husband learned the news of Abiltarov\u2019s arrest\u2014how they stood in silence, unable to speak. \u201cI said, \u2018They\u2019re facing decades. The children won\u2019t see their father for decades.\u2019\u201d Abiltarov was sentenced to eight years and nine months in prison. Since then, Ametov tried not to miss a single search or court hearing held on the peninsula.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"\"<\/figure>\n\n\n\n

Ametov began covering the repression as a citizen journalist. His colleagues say he started reporting on the stories of the detained after meeting their families. Ametov recorded interviews with the parents and wives of the arrested. He edited the videos himself and turned them into reports. Some of these interviews were published by the Crimean Solidarity organization.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

After Ametov\u2019s arrest, Russian security services pressured him to testify against the other defendants in the case. When he flatly refused, they told him, \u201cThen you’ll sit in prison with them.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

This attempt by Russian authorities to coerce the defendant into testifying against others is not the first in the history of political persecution in Crimea. Raim Ayvazov, a defendant in the second Simferopol group of the Hizb ut-Tahrir case, was also pressured to cooperate. \u201cThey took me out to a field, staged an execution, threatened to kill me, and warned that no one would ever find me if I didn\u2019t testify against the other participants in the case,\u201d Ayvazov recounted at his first court hearing in the Southern District Military Court in Rostov-on-Don. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Enver Krosh recalled that FSB officers tried to recruit him in a police station: \u201cThey told me, \u2018You have until noon. If you don\u2019t agree to work with us, we’ll hand you over to the cops, and they\u2019ll frame you in a drug case.\u2019 I said I’d rather go to prison than become an informant.\u201d They planted a bag of what they claimed were drugs in Krosh\u2019s jacket. Later, they beat him and tortured him with electric shocks. That was in the winter of 2015, and in 2022, Krosh became one of the defendants in the Dzhankoi group of the Hizb ut-Tahrir case. His lawyer, Emil Kurbedinov, stated that the security officers beat Krosh in their car following his arrest. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Ametov was sentenced to eleven years in a strict-regime penal colony, accused under the familiar charge against Crimean Tatar Muslims: \u201cparticipation in the activities of a terrorist organization.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

But before this, he became the only person in the entire history of Crimea\u2019s occupation to be acquitted.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

“Not guilty and not leaving Crimea.”<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

The second Bakhchysarai group of the Hizb ut-Tahrir case consists of eight defendants. According to the investigation, radio engineer Memet Belyalov \u201corganized the activities of a terrorist organization,\u201d while the founder of the Salachyk cultural-ethnographic center Suleyman Asanov, human rights defender Server Mustafayev, organizer of children\u2019s and religious events Seyran Saliyev, entrepreneur Server Zekiryayev, religious community leader Edem Smailov, and citizen journalists Tymur Ibrahimov and Ernes Ametov are charged with \u201cparticipation in the activities of a terrorist organization.\u201d They allegedly held their \u201cmeetings\u201d at the Khan Chair Mosque in Bakhchysarai.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

On September 16, 2020, the Southern District Military Court in Rostov-on-Don announced the verdict. Lawyer Lilia Gemedzhi, who defended Server Mustafayev, recalls: \u201cThe session began with the announcement of the ruling. Often, judges read documents unclearly and indistinctly. It was hard to hear. We understood that the ruling was being announced, but for a long time, we couldn\u2019t grasp the content of the document. We even began whispering among ourselves, and it took a while to realize that the ruling acquitted Ernes. To be precise in legal terms, the court determined that Ametov was a member of Hizb ut-Tahrir but had ceased his activities and voluntarily left the organization by the time of his arrest. During the trials, Ernes insisted this was a lie; he had never been a part of this organization, and other defendants in the case confirmed his testimony. However, the court based its decision on the testimony of a secret witness. After this ruling, the sentences for the other defendants were announced. We found it hard to believe that Ernes was acquitted.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Ametov\u2019s acquittal came as a surprise even to FSB officers. In his court speech, Ametov dismissed the prosecution\u2019s claims, explaining point by point why the charges against him were fabricated: \u201cI have already spoken about my presence at the gathering in the mosque, but I\u2019ll say it again\u2014this event and the conversations cannot be viewed by the investigators as a connection to Hizb ut-Tahrir. No one ever spoke to me about HT during these events, nor did I take any oaths or obligations. It was a free visit to the mosque, which I enjoyed because of its informal nature and the topics discussed at these gatherings. These included the Qur\u2019an, Sunnah, Hadiths, and Islam\u2019s view on modern realities.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Gemedzhi notes that later, she and other lawyers reflected on the case and concluded that Ametov\u2019s acquittal was a personal decision by the presiding judge, Rizvan Zubairov. \u201cWhether it was his independent decision as the head of this criminal case or a coordinated one, we don\u2019t know. We can only speculate. If a judge makes a decision that is later overturned, it negatively affects their career statistics. Waiting for the appeal to overturn this decision was unacceptable. We immediately advised Ernes to leave because, legally, he was free. No restrictions could be applied to him. But I remember his position: He said he was not guilty and would not leave Crimea,\u201d Gemedzhi recalls.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"\"<\/figure>\n\n\n\n

\u201cThey uproot us like weeds.\u201d<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Eleonora recalls her memories of Ametov\u2019s first moments of freedom. She saw him outside the court building\u2014for the first time in three years outside the courtroom \u201cfish tank.\u201d He came out in a jacket and a kalpak [traditional Crimean Tatar male headwear]. \u201cHe stood there looking so handsome, like an actor,\u201d Eleonora says. At that session, Eleonora wore a fes, and Russian prosecutor Yevgeniy Kolpikov complimented her: \u201cHe said I had a very beautiful headdress,\u201d Eleonora recalls. Later, Kolpikov filed an appeal to review the court\u2019s decision to release Ametov. “When we traveled back from Rostov-on-Don with Ernes in 2020 after his acquittal, he brought his backpack with personal belongings from the detention center. He never unpacked it. That backpack lay in the room next to the sofa for a year and a half. Ernes told me right away, \u2018They won\u2019t let me go, I don\u2019t want to get used to being home,\u2019\u201d Eleonora recounts.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In April 2022, Ametov\u2019s case was returned to court. He voluntarily appeared at the preliminary hearing of the retrial. Judge Aleksey Magomadov ordered Ametov to be held in custody for two months. Thus, Ametov ended up back in the Simferopol detention center. On November 30, 2023, the Military Appeals Court in Vlasikha (Moscow region) handed down a sentence: eleven years of imprisonment for Ametov. He is currently serving his sentence in a colony in the Vologda region, in the village of Sheksna, over 2,000 kilometers from Crimea.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

During his final speech in court, Ametov said: \u201cThe FSB, through these persecutions, is creating a sterile ideological environment to impose its way of thinking, which is incompatible with the mindset of Muslims. They are identifying and removing undesirable elements from society, like me, like my fellow Crimean Tatar prisoners. They uproot us like weeds. This way, the FSB corrects the course of development for this society. They want to create a homogenous environment, a kind of sterile population that has no independent view of life or events and is only supposed to live as the current authorities dictate.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In the summer of 2024, Eleonora and their sons went on a long visit to see Ametov. \u201cFor those three days of being next to him, emotionally I felt  like I went to the Maldives. The colony is a very unpleasant and dangerous place, but being next to my husband and children, when the four of us stood together and hugged for the first time, I felt absolute happiness. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

He\u2019s lost so much weight\u2014when I saw him, I was very upset. There\u2019s no halal food in the colony, so he eats minimally, just enough to have strength.<\/strong><\/p><\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n

He works in the colony. He has become quite skilled at sewing. He says it helps him distract himself.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Ametov does not share many details about life in the colony with Eleonora: \u201cOne word\u2014prison,\u201d is his short answer to all questions.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

This text was written in August 2024<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Translated by Yevheniia Dubrova<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

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The colony is a very unpleasant and dangerous place, but being next to my husband and children, when the four of us stood together and hugged for the first time, I felt absolute happiness<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":110933,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[2320,2244],"tags":[2324],"class_list":["post-112038","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-free-crimea-en","category-interview-en","tag-free-crimea-en"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/dev.theukrainians.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/112038","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/dev.theukrainians.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/dev.theukrainians.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dev.theukrainians.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dev.theukrainians.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=112038"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/dev.theukrainians.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/112038\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":112043,"href":"https:\/\/dev.theukrainians.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/112038\/revisions\/112043"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dev.theukrainians.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/110933"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/dev.theukrainians.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=112038"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dev.theukrainians.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=112038"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dev.theukrainians.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=112038"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}