On 14 February 2019, he was detained in the Krasnogvardeyskiy district of Crimea and the next day taken into custody by court order on charges of participation in the activities of a terrorist organisation due to his alleged involvement in the Islamist party Hizb ut-Tahrir. On 3 November 2020, he was sentenced to 13 years in a strict regime colony. On 16 April 2021, the court of appeals returned the case to the court of first instance to eliminate procedural violations. On 1 November, the verdict was confirmed. In September 2023, it was reported that Abkhairov’s time spent in custody prior to the court’s sentence coming into force had not been counted toward his time to be served in prison: according to Abkhairov’s own calculations, he should have already been transferred from prison to a strict regime colony. In June 2024, it turned out that he had spent two and a half months more in prison than he should have due to an error in the court ruling.