Russia tortures Crimean Tatar prisoner Mamut Belyalov again – human rights defenders
Date:
04 October 2025
When Russian security forces first detained Mamut Belyalov in 2022, he was 24. They tortured him with electric shocks, beatings, and rape threats until he confessed to a fabricated murder plot. Editor and member of the Kharkiv Human Rights Group, Halyna Coynash, recalled the case of the Kremlin’s prisoner and reported that the FSB returned Belyalov from a prison colony in Volgograd to occupied Crimea for what they called an “interrogation”.
Mamut Belyalov26-year-old Mamut Belyalov, who is already serving a 12-year sentence on fabricated charges, has been brought back to occupied Crimea and subjected to so-called ‘interrogation’ in the form of savage beatings, without a lawyer present. She pointed out that this is the second time that Russia has used torture against the young Crimean Tatar political prisoner, with the fear that new criminal charges are being concocted.
The Russian FSB, which is illegally operating in the temporarily occupied Crimea, seized a citizen of Ukraine on September 10, 2022, and accused him of planning to kill Vadym Volchenko, while the latter was the Russian-installed ‘tourism minister’. This was one of a long series of such alleged plots which the FSB has claimed to have ‘thwarted’ since Russia’s invasion and annexation of Crimea, Halyna Coynash remarked. All of them are based solely, or almost entirely, on ‘confessions’ extracted through various forms of torture and threats. On many occasions, the victims have recounted being forced to take a grenade or gun in their hands, as well as to provide DNA without a lawyer present, in order to fabricate supposed ‘material evidence’.
Although the Crimean Tatar Resource Centre now receives information from Mamut’s family, his situation originally came to light thanks to Nariman Dzhelyal, a Crimean Tatar Mejlis leader, journalist, and, until August 24, 2024, former political prisoner. In March 2023, Dzhelyal wrote about Belyalov, describing him as the latest victim of Russian law enforcement bodies’ lawlessness in Crimea. He explained that the young Crimean Tatar had been seized on September 10, 2022, and had been subjected to savage torture to get him to ‘confess’ to the supposed attempt on the life of Volchenko.
Mamut had recounted how he was in the ninth grade in 2014. After Russia’s invasion and annexation of Crimea, the new occupation ‘administration’ appeared at school and told the students that they needed to get new, Russian citizenship. Mamut refused. Feeling unable to remain in occupied Crimea, in 2017, he entered Kherson State Agrarian University and, upon graduating, found work in his profession at a Kherson farm.
He returned to Crimea for family reasons in September 2021. He had planned to leave within a couple of months; however, following the death of his grandfather, he remained at home, finding work on construction sites.
He was detained on September 10, 2022, and charged the following day with attempted murder under several parts of Article 105 § 2 and Article 30 of Russia’s criminal code. It was claimed that, in the summer of 2022, somebody from Ukraine identified only as ‘Ilya’ had decided to kill the ‘tourism minister’. He had, purportedly, enlisted Ihor Tyshchenko to directly carry out the killing, and Belyalov to find a weapon and pass “remuneration” to Tyshchenko. The latter is a standard part of such cases, with Russia’s FSB eager, on the one hand, to claim that somebody was “working for Ukraine”, while on the other, to present this as having been for mercenary motives, not out of patriotism.
“Belyalov was subjected to horrific torture, including electric currents, beatings, and threats of rape, which they threatened to record and post online. They also tried to get him to provide forced testimony against one or other person whom they would accuse of involvement in Hizb ut-Tahrir or the Jehovah’s Witnesses,” Halyna Coynash stressed.
On September 23, 2024, before ‘prosecutor’ Oleksandr Dombrovsky, the so-called occupation Kyivskyy district court in Simferopol, under illegitimate ‘judge’ Mykhailo Bilousov, found Belyalov ‘guilty’ of possessing a weapon and of a plan to kill Volchenko.
“With particular cynicism, Volchenko lodged a civil suit demanding one million rubles in so-called ‘moral compensation’. As well as the 12-year sentence in a maximum-security prison colony, Belyalov was ordered to pay 1 million rubles and a fine of 350,000 rubles,” Halyna Coynash reported.
After the sentence, Belyalov was illegally transferred from Crimea to Prison Colony No. 19 in Volgograd. Kharkiv Human Rights Group reported that the Kremlin’s prisoner was given no explanation for why he was being brought back to Crimea, and the so-called ‘interrogation’ — in fact a torture session — raises very serious concerns.
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By way of background, the Russian State Duma adopted the law on denouncing the European Convention for the Prevention of Torture and Inhuman or Degrading Treatment or Punishment on September 17, 2025. The Russian ruler Vladimir Putin signed the law on September 29, 2025.
Russia’s withdrawal from this convention will have negative consequences for its international influence on the human rights situation in the country, according to Artem Oliynyk, an advocacy officer at CrimeaSOS.
He said Russia’s denunciation of yet another international treaty will significantly complicate the work of states and organizations attempting to counter human rights violations in Russia and in the temporarily occupied territories of Ukraine, particularly those concerning foreign nationals. Fewer platforms for dialogue limit the ability to respond to torture and other forms of ill-treatment.
