Nariman Dzhelyal is a Crimean Tatar journalist and politician currently held as a political prisoner. Dzhelyal was born on April 27, 1980, in Navoi, Uzbek SSR. In 1989, he and his parents returned to Crimea. After completing his education in Dzhankoi, he pursued a degree in political science at Odesa National University.
He worked as a presenter at ATR TV Channel and contributed to Avdet newspaper. He also taught history and law at Simferopol International School.
Since 2013, Dzhelyal has been the deputy chairman of the Mejlis of the Crimean Tatar people and director of the information and analytics department.
On September 4, 2021, he was arrested for allegedly “sabotaging the use of a gas pipeline in the village of Perevalne in Crimea.” On the same day, Nariman Dzhelyal and his four colleagues, also Crimean Tatars, were charged under Part 2 of Article 281, “Sabotage,” of the Russian Criminal Code, which carries a sentence of imprisonment ranging from ten to twenty years. At the time of writing, Dzhelyal was still behind bars. On June 28, 2024, Ukraine brought back ten civilians from Russian prisons, including Dzhelyal. Now he and his family are in Kyiv.
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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.
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“I don’t know whether I should rejoice or cry,” Leviza says and looks away in confusion. “Rejoice, because now I know where he is, or cry for what he’s been going through.”
Today, after two months of silence, Leviza finally received a letter from her husband. He had been sent to Siberia. On a piece of white paper, in his neat handwriting, he wrote: “Hello darling. On Friday, I was allowed to inform you about my arrival.”
His 5,500-kilometer-long journey from Simferopol to Siberia began on October 2, 2023, and passed through Krasnodar, Dvubratsk, Saratov, Chelyabinsk, Orenburg, and Krasnoyarsk.
On November 20, Dzhelyal arrived at the Minusinsk prison, reserved for the most dangerous offenders.
The official reason for the imprisonment of Dzhelyal, a Crimean Tatar politician and journalist, in 2012, was an alleged “sabotage.” He was accused of being an accomplice in the blowup of the gas pipeline in the village of Perevalne. However, everyone knows that, in reality, he was detained for his outspoken anti-Kremlin stance and defense of Crimean Tatars’ rights in Crimea. The occupying authorities did not forgive his participation in the Crimea Platform, whose first summit took place on August 23, 2021, in Kyiv.
In his essay, which would later receive a special award, “The Words of Freedom,” in the Crimean Fig / Qırım Inciri contest and published in the eponymous anthology, Dzhelyal wrote:
“I was prepared to face charges for my involvement in the activities of the ‘banned’ Mejlis of the Crimean Tatar people or for advocating Ukraine’s territorial integrity, which the Russian government considers as incitement to violate Russia’s territorial integrity. Or they could’ve cited ‘popular’ legislative measures on extremism, I thought. So, I was astonished by the nefarious plot the Kremlin had devised for me. My attendance at the Crimea Platform summit clearly crossed a ‘red line’ for them. The Kremlin reacted harshly to this and threatened to punish anyone who attended the summit.”
They came for Dzhelyal on September 4. After a brief search, the politician and former deputy chairman of the Mejlis was whisked away in a blue van without plates. Since then, his wife has only seen him through the prison bars.
The court rejected the appeal and upheld the original sentence: seventeen years of imprisonment, three of which were to be served in prison and fourteen in a high-security penal colony.
Leviza tries to stay strong, fighting back tears, but every now and then, she wipes them away with her slender fingers.
While Dzhelyal was held in the Pre-Trial Detention Center No.2 in Simferopol, he developed varicose veins from standing on his feet in the cell for sixteen hours straight every single day. They didn’t allow him to sit on the bed or the floor. A herniated disk is causing him pain, and there’s a lack of medication to treat it. Leviza wanted to pass on a medicine kit to him when he was about to be transferred to prison—only to be told that the center’s employees were not ‘a medicine delivery service.’ During transportation to Siberia, Dzhelyal fell sick and suffered from a cough, a runny nose, and conjunctivitis for almost a month.
“How is he doing there?” Leviza keeps asking. “I can’t stop worrying. You can’t imagine how much I miss him.”
And it’s not just her missing him but also their four children.
Avdet, or Return
Dzhelyal’s father was six years old when his family was deported. Arriving in Uzbekistan in 1944, they fought for survival, living in dugouts and subsisting on half-rotten potatoes and sprouted wheat.
“Perhaps that’s why we’re not scared of what’s been happening in Crimea now,” Leviza says. “The worst has already happened.”
Russians not only physically destroyed Crimean Tatars but also erased any mention of this indigenous people of Crimea. They continued what had started during the time of the Russian Empire. Before 1948, most geographic names on the peninsula of Crimean Tatar origin were changed to Russian. Koktebel became Planerske, Karasubazar turned into Bilohirsk, Kurman was renamed Krasnohvardiyske, and hundreds of other villages and towns with old names steeped in local character were given bland Soviet names.
While the Soviet government in Crimea destroyed monuments of Crimean Tatar history and culture, the Crimean Tatars who survived the deportation struggled to make ends meet thousands of kilometers away from their homeland: in Central Asia and Russia, including Siberia.
They had to register with the commandant’s headquarters. According to Crimean Tatar historian Gulnara Bekirova, the first instance of unauthorized departure from the place of settlement was punishable by five days’ arrest, while a repeated violation was considered “escape from the place of exile” and punished by twenty years in prison.
After Stalin’s cult of personality in the Soviet Union was condemned, a directive was adopted lifting the restrictions on special settlements for Crimean Tatars and eliminating the requirement of administrative supervision. However, the duplicity of Stalin’s successors lay in not allowing the exiles to return to their homeland.
In 1957, Crimean Tatars began to fight for the right to return to their homeland and organized into advocacy groups.
They wrote petitions and sent thousands of individual letters to the Kremlin. Many disregarded the prohibition and returned to Crimea, attempting to settle anywhere as long as it was on the peninsula.
In June 1978, Musa Mamut immolated himself in Crimea as a protest against the persecution of Crimean Tatars. He had been threatened with repeated persecution under the clause of “violation of the passport regulations” [At the time, Crimean Tatars were not yet allowed to return to Crimea.]
The most influential activists of the Crimean Tatar movement were arrested. In particular, Mustafa Dzhemilev was put on trial seven times. He spent a total of fifteen years in prison and exile.
It was only after 1989 that the laws were relaxed, and Crimean Tatars began to return to Crimea en masse. Among them were the families of Nariman and Leviza.
When Dzhelyal’s parents returned to Crimea in 1989, they couldn’t move into their house. So, they settled down outside Dzhankoi. As in 1944, they lived in a dugout, slowly building their own house.
Even after the Soviet Union collapsed and Ukraine became independent, returnees found it extremely difficult to register their place of residence or secure employment. Dzhelyal’s mother, like Leviza’s, was a financial economist, but spent most of her time tending their family’s vegetable patch or caring for the cattle.
Crimean Tatars who, after being deported in 1944, had managed to rebuild their lives from scratch in places of exile, now, half a century later, made their choice. They left their well-built houses to live in dugouts again. But they didn’t care—they were living on their native soil.
Despite the tough conditions, older Crimean Tatars rejoiced at the opportunity to spend their last years at home. “Bury me in my homeland,” they asked.
Not only did adults struggle to find jobs—but younger Crimean Tatars faced similar challenges in accessing education. Dzhelyal’s brother pursued studies to become a fitter, while his sister trained as a tailor. Enrolling in a university required you to “jump over your head.” After completing regular schooling, Dzhelyal managed to leverage admission quotas to enroll in Odesa National University to study political science.
Following eight years of studying and teaching, he had the opportunity to remain in Odesa. However, he chose to return to Crimea instead. Upon his return, he sent his CV to Avdet, a Crimean Tatar newspaper. At that time, its legendary editor-in-chief, Shevket Kaybullayev, was recruiting young talent for the editorial team, recognizing the significant potential in their youthful vigor.
It was at Avdet that Dzhelyal met Leviza.
Commuter trains
“Light hair, tall. He stood out among others,” Leviza says about her husband.
One day, Dzhelyal came to talk to his boss but had to wait for him for two hours. He and Leviza, who worked as the editor-in-chief’s assistant, struck up a conversation. One thing led to another, and Dzhelyal started to frequent his boss’ office.
“What was it about him that impressed me?” Dzhelyal’s wife wonders. “His humanity. I had quite a few admirers. Some of them were pretty rich and would come to see me in their cars. Nariman came by commuter train. He never tried to impress me with material possessions. He was honest and straightforward.”
Dzhelyal’s family made their living by maintaining the vegetable patch and greenhouses, and Leviza recalls that Dzhelyal and his father shared one winter jacket between them. That’s how tough that period was.
“He’s incredibly kind, honest, sincere, and open,” Leviza says. “I liked his manner of speaking—he never raised his voice and always tried to settle controversial issues considering all perspectives.”
For fifteen years of their marriage, Leviza never heard him raise his voice. The couple would just sit down and talk if any misunderstandings came up.
Dzhelyal and Leviza took commuter trains to Simferopol since the bus fare was too expensive for them.
“Nariman would get on the commuter train with me to spend more time together and walk me home, even though he lived in the opposite direction,” she says, laughing. “Then he’d walk home for five kilometers.”
Dzhelyal also wrote poems, typing them up on his black-and-white Nokia.
Three years of work at Avdet had a profound impact on Dzhelyal. In Crimean Tatar, ‘Advet’ means ‘return.’ The inaugural issue of this newspaper came out in 1990, marking the establishment of the first Crimean Tatar outlet in Crimea after the deportation.
In June 1991, the Kurultai, a national congress of the Crimean Tatar people, was reconvened. They elected members of the Mejlis, a representative body similar to a parliament.
Avdet had its office in the building of the Mejlis, where people associated with the Crimean Tatar movement often gathered. Dzhelyal reported on general political issues but also delved into history, exploring the cost of Crimean Tatars’ return to their homeland.
The realization of this cost changed him forever.
The youngest
Alim Aliev, a journalist and human rights activist, fondly remembers the long evenings he and Dzhelyal spent working on newspaper layouts together during their time at Avdet. They discussed politics and the Crimean Tatar movement, often carrying these discussions over to picnics, someone’s home, or a local café.
“We discussed the front pages and how to distribute the newspaper,” Alim recalls. “We were also in constant contact with members of the Mejlis. Mustafa Dzhemilev always took twenty or thirty copies of Avdet when we came down from Kyiv. He was always smoking, and the atmosphere of those offices filled with smoke was special to us.”
After getting married, Dzhelyal juggled three jobs. In addition to his work at Avdet, he was employed at ATR, a Crimean Tatar TV channel, where he established a socio-political show, “Perekhrestia” (“Crossroads”). He also taught history and law at Simferopol International School.
Over time, the family welcomed children one after another. Adile was born in 2009, and Emine followed in 2011. At first, their family lived in only two rooms, so Dzhelyal invested much time into completing the construction of a house and gradually improving it, step by step, to create better conditions for his family.
Later, following Russia’s occupation of Crimea, Dzhelyal and Leviza welcomed two more children: Dzemil in 2016 and Nial in 2020.
Caught in the whirlwind of events in his professional life, Dzhelyal sought solace as he crossed the threshold of his home.
“He wanted to find peace at home, so we rarely discussed his professional challenges,” Leviza says.
Dzhelyal would play board games with his children, read to them, or organize outings. Every evening, the kids eagerly awaited his return, shouting ‘Baba!’—‘father’ in Crimean Tatar—as soon as they spotted the headlights of his car.
Even if Dzhelyal returned home exhausted, if anyone called for his help, he would get up and leave once more.
“No matter if he was in good health or sick, if it was day or night, he felt a sense of duty, and whenever something happened, he would go where his help was needed without hesitation,” says Leviza.
Leviza believes that Dzhelyal is a teacher at heart and, thanks to this, he knows how to reconcile people with diverse opinions.
“He’s a center of gravity,” Leviza remarks.
Alim Aliev also emphasizes that Dzhelyal knows how to unite people around him and communicate with diverse groups.
“He’s been a magnet for activists as he worked to organize and include those with disparate opinions and initiatives,” Alim Aliev says. “He’s never compromised his values.”
In 2012, the Kurultai of the Crimean Tatar people nominated Dzhelyal for a seat in the Verkhovna Rada of Ukraine. In 2013, he became one of the five deputy chairmen of the Mejlis, the national self-governing body of Crimean Tatars. He was the youngest among them.
Dzhelyal is recognized as a brilliant political analyst, and, according to Alim Aliev, his appointment to the Mejlis after a democratic election was not only a victory for the newspaper, but also for the entire Crimean Tatar movement. After all, it is the younger generation that holds the potential to bring about change.
“We were thrilled that someone who understands the new generation of Crimean Tatars would represent us,” says Aliev.
Tekrarlav, or Repetition
“After Russia occupied Crimea, we knew what to expect,” Leviza says.
Russians immediately began searching Crimean Tatar homes, and any attempts of resistance were met with severe punishment.
In particular, on March 3, 2014, a few days after the Russian Federation’s army invaded the peninsula, Crimean Tatar Reshat Ametov initiated a solitary protest in downtown Simferopol. Inspired by Mahatma Gandhi’s ideas, he peacefully protested the occupation of Crimea. However, he was immediately abducted: dragged into a car and taken away. His body was discovered two weeks later, bearing signs of horrendous torture.
The Russian government imprisoned dozens of Crimean Tatars, charging them with “extremism.” Russian police raided Crimean Tatar homes at night, conducting searches and fabricating cases against them. Dzhelyal consistently supported the political prisoners and visited them in their places of detention, whether in Rostov-on-Don or Moscow.
“In 2014, many older Crimean Tatars passed away,” Leviza recalls. “Those events took a heavy toll on them. I’d look into their eyes, filled with tears, and get restless. They’d spent fifty years in exile, and just as they returned and began to scramble back onto their feet after the hardships of the 1990s , it all started again…”
Leviza worked as a teacher in a Crimean Tatar group at a nursery school. In 2014, the school needed to set up a patriotic corner in each room.
“I brought the largest Crimean Tatar flag I could find at home and a poster with the Crimean Tatar anthem,” Leviza says, recalling the events that took place almost a decade ago. “I showed my corner to them when they came to check it. After all, it was in a Crimean Tatar group that I was teaching.”
Today, the proportion of Crimean Tatar language in bilingual nursery groups is being reduced. Teachers may say hello and goodbye to children in Crimean Tatar or explain some words during lessons, but this does not qualify as a “national group” where teachers speak Crimean Tatar to children throughout the day.
“Children won’t learn the language this way,” remarks Leviza. “We nearly lost our language due to the deportation. Personally, I only learned Crimean Tatar at university. But after our children were born, Dzhelyal and I made a clear decision to speak only Crimean Tatar to them.”
After the occupation of Crimea, an increasing number of students have been studying Crimean Tatar as an elective rather than a mandatory subject.
Public activist Emine Avamileva says that today, the Crimean Tatar language as a state language is merely a facade and imitation: “In reality, it remains a language of everyday communication within families, and you won’t hear it spoken in public or political spheres in Crimea.”
The grip on Crimean Tatars in Crimea tightens even further. There’s only a straight road ahead, and those who dare to veer to the right or left face severe consequences.
“I’ll be back soon.”
“He [Nariman] and I had heated arguments in 2014, when both of us would raise our voices, as the disparities between the realities in Crimea and the non-occupied territories of Ukraine felt incredibly acute,” Alim Aliev recalls. “We all knew that it was dangerous for him to stay in Crimea. But from the perspective of the national movement and Crimea, his decision to stay was probably the only right one.”
Two years after the annexation, in 2016, the Russian court in Crimea banned the Mejlis. So, Dzhelyal went back to working as a freelance journalist.
“The district police officer would come to warn us on the eve of dates important for the Crimean Tatar people,” Leviza says, reflecting on the period after 2014. “Nariman was constantly summoned to interrogations, conversations, and meetings with law enforcement officers. In 2015, after yet another interrogation, they searched our home. They even looked inside the jars of rice.”
However, the search on September 4, 2021, was different. It felt more like an arrest. Men in balaclavas came to take Dzhelyal away, not to search for anything specific. At 7 AM, twelve men burst into the yard, having climbed over the fence, and banged on the door.
Later, Dzhelyal would write in his diary: “I was slowly realizing what lay ahead of me but refused to believe it just yet. I dashed to the window and saw a man in a balaclava jumping over the fence. I ran back to my wife and told her to get dressed and wake the children up. I started to get dressed, too, and tried to call Zair-aga [Zair Smedlyaev, secretary of the Medjlis], but the cell signal was down. They hammered on the door.”
“I will open the door, but please keep things quiet. There are young children in the house,” Dzhelyal asked the men.
In his essay, later published in Crimean Fig. Küreş / Qırım inciri. Küreş, he wrote: “During those moments, I thought about how to behave so that it would be over as soon as possible and wouldn’t traumatize my children too much. Hearing the approval of my ‘guests,’ I opened the door and walked outside to meet them.”
“He tried not to show his emotions so I would stay calm,” Leviza says, recalling that dark day. “Our youngest daughter was only eleven months old. He was afraid that the children would be traumatized. I sat with the children in the living room while they talked. Nariman wanted them to leave as soon as possible, so he complied with whatever they wanted him to do. He immediately gave them the password to his phone and laptop, as if signaling that he had nothing to hide.”
As they took Dzhelyal away, he said to his family, trying to calm them down: “I’ll be back soon.” But when the lawyer Emine Avamileva arrived, the van without plates sped away so fast that no one could catch up with it.
On September 5, Dzhelyal wrote in his diary: “When I was taken away, my father asked me: ‘Are they going to imprison you?’ I placed my hand on his shoulder and assured him that everything would be alright. Now I regret that I didn’t hug my parents. But at the time, I didn’t want to stress them out with this kind of goodbye. Everything happens by the will of Allah. I only hope they will get through this.”
Dzhelyal’s father, Enver, died in the spring of 2022 after the beginning of Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine.
“I wouldn’t be alive but for hope.”
Dzhelyal was charged with “committing sabotage by an organized group” under Part 2 of Article 281 of the Criminal Code of the Russian Federation, as well as under Part 4 of Article 221 for “illegal acquisition, storage of explosive devices by an organized group” and “smuggling of an explosive device.”
Two weeks before the house search, the gas pipeline in the village of Perevalne was damaged. Investigators concluded it was sabotage and charged Dzhelyal and his cousins, Asan and Aziz Akhtemov, with the crime. The prosecution did not provide direct evidence implicating them in the act, but the court showed little interest in such evidence, anyway.
The officers of the Federal Security Service (FSB) kept Dzhelyal in handcuffs and with a bag over his head while investigators pressured and threatened him during interrogations. From September to November 2021, he was held at the 15th unit of the Crimean Republican Naum Balaban Psychiatric Hospital No. 1, a move aimed at applying psychological pressure on him. Later, he was transferred to the special bloc at the Pre-Trial Detention Center—the same prison in Simferopol where the Soviet government had executed the Crimean Tatar intellectuals in April 1938.
The defenders of Dzhelyal submitted an appeal, but it was declined. The Third Court of Appeals in Sochi did not amend the verdict of the “supreme court” of the so-called Republic of Crimea, despite the defense—over the course of three days—detailing the violations committed by investigators during the pre-trial investigation and by the prosecution and judges when the case was considered at the court of first instance.
Following Dzhelyal’s transfer to Siberia and two months of silence, Leviza finally received a letter from her husband.
“I know it’s hard for him,” she says, giving way to tears. “But there’s hope. I wouldn’t be alive but for hope. Dozens of Crimean Tatars are in prison. You feel their plight with all your heart, but when it comes to your own home, it all feels completely different.”
It’s her children who pull Leviza out of depression. Life cannot be put on pause: She has to take them to nursery and school, and feed and dress them. The rest of her time is spent in court. Leviza says that her children are her biggest helpers now, as well as everyone who worked with Dzhelyal, met with him, or were his friends.
“I think I got visitors from every single town in Crimea,” she says. “Some would bring me a sack of potatoes, others onions, meat, or grains—all kinds of things. Their support is so genuine that, in such moments, I realize how much they respect Nariman and what he has done for the Crimean Tatar people. I feel their support even outside Crimea. I will never forget their help.”
Leviza cries again, wiping away her tears.
“Nariman himself and the dignity with which he accepted this challenge are my main inspirations,” she says. “Throughout each trial, Nariman conducted himself with dignity and honor. He was so resolute that his opponents had nothing to respond. This kind of behavior is natural only for someone who, despite all the lies around them, upholds dignity, truth, and justice. So, there’s no way I can betray my husband’s dignity by acting differently. I will always stand by his side in his fight for justice.”
The text was written in December 2023–February 2024
English translation – Yevheniia Dubrova, Hanna Leliv
Copyediting – Catherine Parnell
