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Political prisoner Azat Miftakhov has reported torture at Correctional Colony No. 18 “Polar Owl” in Kharp, a settlement in the Yamalo-Nenets Autonomous District, northern Russia. His account was published by The Insider.
According to Miftakhov, on 21 April—the day after he was transferred to the colony—he was taken to the colony’s operations department. There, both staff and other prisoners demanded he follow their orders, including cleaning the toilet. After refusing, the political prisoner claims, he was beaten.
Miftakhov describes being thrown to the floor, bound with tape and beaten—including being struck on the heels with a wooden mallet. Later, he says, he was subjected to electric shocks. “They threw me to the floor. Bulanov sat on my torso. <…> Mikhail sat on my legs and began wrapping them with tape. <…> Mikhail punched me in the groin several times so that I would stop resisting,” Miftakhov recounts.
He also reported threats of sexual assault and attempts to humiliate him. The staff demanded complete obedience. When he refused, the violence continued.
Azat Miftakhov is a mathematician and postgraduate at Moscow State University’s Faculty of Mechanics and Mathematics. In 2021, he was sentenced to six years in a penal colony over the case concerning an attack on the United Russia party office, a charge he denied.
In September 2025, he was detained immediately after his release and accused of “justifying terrorism.” According to investigators, he allegedly approved of the actions of Mikhail Zhlobitsky (a 17-year-old student at the Arkhangelsk Polytechnic College with anarchist views, who detonated a bomb at the FSB office in Arkhangelsk in October 2018). Miftakhov denies this.
He was later sentenced by the court to four years in prison.