Prisoner of conscience Azat Miftakhov is in grave danger!

Disturbing news about political prisoner Azat Miftakhov reached his family on April 19. Imprisoned at the IK-17 penal colony in the city of Kirov, he was taken to Vorkuta, in the far north of the Ural Mountains, from where he sent this message: “Two days on the train have exhausted me. The toilets are only accessible every four hours, and boiling water for tea is provided three times a day. We can barely turn around in the compartments where the prisoners are crammed together (…). Tomorrow morning, we’re leaving for Kharp and will arrive there the same day. It seems I’ll be going straight to the detention camp.”

Azat’s transfer to Kharp puts his life at the mercy of the security apparatus for the remaining eighteen months of his sentence.

Kharp Penal Colony No. 3, known as the Polar Wolf, is one of Russia’s northernmost prisons, located beyond the Arctic Circle. It was established in 1961 on the abandoned site of a former unit of the Stalinist Gulag. Several prisoners of conscience have been held there, including Alexei Navalny—the former leader of the liberal opposition—who died there under mysterious circumstances in February 2024.

In addition to the danger to his life, Azat’s lawyer notes that it will now take her four full days and 40,000 rubles to visit her client, whereas it used to cost only 10,000 rubles and a few hours of travel when he was incarcerated in the Ulyanovsk region.

Azat Miftakhov, born in 1993, is a young mathematics researcher at Moscow State University and an anarchist activist. Arrested in February 2019 and tortured, he was put on trial based on a statement from an “anonymous witness,” then sentenced to six years in prison on January 18, 2021.

Released in September 2023, he was re-arrested just minutes after leaving prison and sentenced to another prison term based, once again, on the “anonymous” testimony of a fellow inmate.

In Russia and around the world, support committees for Azat Miftakhov have issued a call for international solidarity.

With our correspondents