The European Court of Human Rights (ECtHR) awarded 26 thousand euros in compensation to mathematician Azat Miftakhov due to beating by security forces during his arrest in February 2019. This was reported on the ECHR website, and the Trauma Point project drew attention to the decision.
At the beginning of February 2019, Miftakhov, who was then detained on suspicion of manufacturing explosives (Article 223.1 of the Criminal Code), told his lawyer Svetlana Sidorkina about the beating at the Balashikha Ministry of Internal Affairs. According to the mathematician, the security forces demanded that he confess.
“He shocked me once and then gave me a tangerine.” Those detained in the case of explosives in Balashikha describe how they were interrogated
“As he says, one of the employees held up an object that looked like a screwdriver, and this screwdriver applied it to the chest from the bottom right and said that it will be used if he does not do what they ask,” recounts the words of Sidorkin’s client.
In addition, according to the lawyer, Miftakhov was punched in the face, punched in the chest and kicked. The mathematician's defender noted that there were no visible injuries, other than a bruise on the ear and a mark from a screwdriver.
In January 2021, the mathematician was sentenced to six years in prison for hooliganism (Part 2 of Article 213 of the Criminal Code). According to the Investigative Committee, in 2018, anarchists broke the window of the United Russia office in the Khovrino district of Moscow, threw a smoke bomb inside and posted the video on the Internet. A secret witness, questioned a year after the case was opened, claimed that he identified Miftakhov by his “expressive eyebrows.” The anarchist himself denied that he participated in the action.
Two weeks before his release, the anarchist was added to the “list of extremists and terrorists” maintained by Rosfinmonitoring. The day after leaving the colony, on September 5, Miftakhov was sent to a pre-trial detention center on a new case of “justification of terrorism.” According to investigators, in the spring, while watching news about the war, Miftakhov said out loud that he would “take revenge” for the death of a friend who fought on the side of Ukraine, and that “the FSB officers should be blown up.” The mathematician’s wife said that the prisoner with whom he “communicated most” gave testimony against her husband.
In addition, as Travmpunkt writes, today, September 14, the ECHR made decisions on another 114 cases of citizens Russia about beatings by security forces and poor conditions of detention in FSIN institutions. In total, 1 million 926 thousand euros were recovered in favor of the victims.
Russia, after being expelled from the Council of Europe, refused to implement ECHR decisions made after March 15, 2022.
