The pain was so terrible that I began screaming.” Azat Miftakhov spoke about torture...

“The pain was so terrible that I began screaming.” Azat Miftakhov spoke about torture at the Polar Owl penal colony

▶️ What happened

Political prisoner Azat Miftakhov reported being tortured at Penal Colony No. 18, known as “Polar Owl,” in Kharp. His account was published by The Insider.

According to Miftakhov, on April 21 — the day after he was transferred — he was taken to the colony’s operations department. There, staff and inmates demanded that he obey their orders, including cleaning a toilet. After he refused, the political prisoner says, they began beating him.

▶️ Torture

Miftakhov says he was knocked to the floor, bound with tape, and beaten — including with a wooden mallet on the heels. Later, he says, electric current was used on him.

“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 several times in the groin to make me stop resisting,” Miftakhov says.

He also reported threats of rape and attempts to humiliate him.

The staff demanded total submission. When he refused, the violence continued.

▶️ Who is Azat Miftakhov

Azat Miftakhov is a mathematician and postgraduate student at Moscow State University’s Faculty of Mechanics and Mathematics.

In 2021, he was sentenced to six years in prison in a case over an attack on a United Russia office; he denied guilt.

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 himself denies this.

Later, a court sentenced him to four years in prison.

🛟 Subscribe to OVD-Info to understand how repression works in modern Russia.

Azat Miftakhov / Photo from the FreeAzat! Telegram channel