Azat Miftakhov
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Azat Miftakhov 22.03.1993
Address: Miftakhov Azat Fanisovich, 1993 g.r. 610004, Kirovskaya obl., g.Kirov, ul. Mopra, d.1, SIZO-1. Russia
In 2021 Azat sentenced to 6 years in prison for the action. On 4 September 2023 Azat Miftakhov was released from penal colony. On the same day Federal Security Service (FSB) has charged Miftakhov in a criminal case for «justifying terrorism». According to FSB, Azat discussed with other prisoners the war in Ukraine and the actions of the anarchist Mikhail Zhlobitsky, who caused an explosion in the FSB building and died in 2018. Miftakhov refused to plead guilty. On 5 September 2023 the court arrested him for two months, since the new criminal investigation has been opened.
Previous criminal case
Anarchist Azat Miftakhov is a mathematics and mechanics graduate student at Moscow State University.
In 2019 Miftakhov was detained by law enforcement officers on suspicion of making explosives, a criminal offense as defined by Article 223 Part 1 of the Russian Federal Criminal Code. He was held for twenty-four hours at the Balashikha police station, where law enforcement officers tortured him, demanding he make a full confession.
A court refused to remand him in custody due to a lack of evidence. Over the next three days, police investigators were unable to muster any evidence against Miftakhov, and so he was released from the temporary detention facility without charge.
As Miftakhov was leaving the detention facility, he was detained by men in plain clothes and taken to the Interior Ministry’s headquarters for Moscow’s Northern Administrative Division, where he was told he had been detained in another case, an investigation of alleged disorderly conduct outside the United Russia office in Khovrino on January 13, 2018. An investigation into vandalism (Criminal Code Article 214 Part 1) had been opened in January 2018, but Russian law does not stipulate remanding vandalism suspects in custody during investigations.
Miftakhov denies the charges against him. He believes he has been framed because of his anarchist views.
Over a thousand lecturers, professors, researchers, and students from leading Russian and international universities have signed a petition in Miftakhov’s defense, include MIT linguistics professor Noam Chomsky and Viktor Vasilyev, president of the Moscow Mathematics Society. Mikhail Finkelberg, professor at the Higher School of Economics and Skoltech, Boris Kravchenko, president of the Confederation of Labor of Russia (KTR) and member of the Russian Presidential Human Rights Council, and Russian MP Oleg Shein have agreed to stand surety for Miftakhov.
More information: https://avtonom.org/en/news/expressive-eyebrows-russian-anarchist-azat-miftakhov-jailed-after-secret-witness-testifies
