Alexey Navalny outraged by persecution of anarchist Azat Miftakhov, jailed as soon as he walked free after six years in prison
Writing from prison, the opposition politician Alexey Navalny protested the Russian authorities’ persecution of Azat Miftakhov, arrested earlier this month as he was leaving the penal colony after serving a six-year sentence.
Navalny called the new case against the former Moscow State University grad student a “torture extended in time”:
He was sentenced to six years on fabricated charges. Because he refused to give false testimony against innocent people, truly unbearable conditions were created for Miftakhov in prison. His sentence was a six-year term in hell, and when it was over, they arrested him again, right at the prison gates, based on the testimony of a prison snitch who said that Miftakhov condoned terrorism by saying something after watching TV.
“This is despicable beyond imagination,” Navalny concluded, calling upon the global academic community to persist in their efforts to publicize Miftakhov’s case.
Miftakhov was first arrested in 2019, initially on suspicions of illicit explosives manufacturing. Later, the detectives altered the charges without releasing Miftakhov from custody. Miftakhov did not admit any guilt but said he was tortured in jail. In 2021, a Moscow district court sentenced him to six years in a penal colony, which he served in the Kirov region of Russia.
The international NGO Human Rights Watch has called on the Russian authorities to reconsider Miftakhov’s case. The Russian human rights advocacy organization Memorial considers him a political prisoner.
Shortly before Miftakhov’s release, it emerged that a new criminal case had been opened against him, based on some of the things he said when watching the television with other inmates.