Azat Miftakhov in the cage at his first custody hearing in February 2019. Photo courtesy of BBC Russian Service

Mathematician Azat Miftakhov’s Arrest Extended for Five Months

OVD Info

March 23, 2020

The Golovino District Court in Moscow has extended for five months the remand in custody of Moscow State University mathematics graduate student Azat Miftakhov, accused of disorderly conduct, according to a post on the Telegram channel FreeAzat!

Miftakhov will thus remain under arrest until September 4. A hearing on the merits was postponed due to the absence of counsel for the injured party. The next hearing in the case has been scheduled for April 20.

A mathematics graduate student at Moscow University and an anarchist, Miftakhov was arrested in connection with an alleged case of disorderly conduct by a group of people, punishable under Article 213.2 of the Russian Criminal Code. According to investigators, on January 30, 2018, Miftakhov, Andrei Yeikin, Yelena Gorban, Alexei Kobaidze, and Svyatoslav Rechkalov broke a window at a United Russian party office in Moscow’s Khovrino District and threw a smoke bomb into it.

The mathematician was detained on February 1, 2019. He later told his lawyer he had been tortured with a screwdriver. Over the following eleven days, his term in police custody was extended under various pretexts. OVD Info has written in detail about aspects of Miftakhov’s detention and published a chronicle of developments in the case of the broken window at the United Russia party office. Miftakhov has been in remand prison for over a year.

Translated by the Russian Reader. Please read my earlier posts on the Khovrino vandalism case and the Russian police state’s relentless persecution of Azat Miftakhov.