Ulker Gashimova spent a month in solitary confinement.

Ulker Gashimova, a native of Derbent and serving a sentence for incitement to terrorism and extremism in a Kostroma penal colony, spent the entire month of October in a punishment cell.

As "Caucasian Knot" reported, on October 8, 2024, a military court in Rostov-on-Don sentenced Derbent activist Ulker Gashimova to four years and six months in prison, finding her guilty of incitement to terrorism and extremism. On February 27, 2025, an appellate court upheld the sentence. Human rights activists have recognized Gashimova as a political prisoner. At the end of May, she was transferred to Penal Colony No. 3 in the Kostroma Region.

The administration of Kostroma Penal Colony No. 3 regularly sends convicted activist Ulker Gashimova from Dagestan to solitary confinement. In October, she spent a whole month in solitary confinement, the human rights project OVD-Info* reported today.

The fact that she is frequently placed in solitary confinement became known from a letter Gashimova sent to one of the project's readers.

“They gave me another 15 days, and I'll be in solitary confinement until October 31st. I've been in solitary confinement all of October, and I don't know what to do anymore. I don't know what to do with myself,” she wrote in a letter dated October 18th.

In other letters from prison, Gashimov reported that her conditions had been tightened. "In the pretrial detention center, she was repeatedly held in solitary confinement; the investigator threatened her with forced treatment; in the penal colony, she was sent to solitary confinement and then transferred to strict conditions. She calls her time behind bars Groundhog Day: 'every day is the same,'" wrote a member of the Facebook** group "Voices of Political Emigrants," whose volunteers write letters to political prisoners, on October 6.

In the spring of 2023, security forces detained 23-year-old activist Ulker Gashimova from Derbent at a Moscow airport while attempting to leave Russia. Her fiancé reported that the girl planned to seek political asylum in the Netherlands. After two administrative arrests in the Moscow region, Gashimova was sent to Dagestan and placed in a pretrial detention center. With the start of her trial, Gashimova was transferred to a Rostov pretrial detention center, where she complained of pressure. investigator. 

* are included in the register of foreign agents.

** activities Meta (which owns Facebook, Instagram, and WhatsApp) is banned in Russia.