Azat Miftakhov: Six Years in Prison for Not Breaking a Window

Lev Schlosberg
Facebook
January 18, 2021

Moscow State University graduate student Azat Miftakhov has been sentenced by the Golovinsky District Court in Moscow to six years in prison in the case of [attempted] arson at a United Russia party field office in the Khovrino [district of Moscow]. He was convicted based on testimony given by two secret witnesses, including one who died a year ago. The real arsonists, who pleaded guilty and testified that Miftakhov was innocent, were sentenced two and four years of probation, respectively. Miftakhov is a political activist and scholar. [In rendering its verdict,] the court copied the indictment filed by the prosecutors, who had requested exactly six years in prison for Miftakhov.

2021 has begun with trials attesting to the final destruction of the courts in Russia. This is the real “constitutional reform.” The destruction of the courts as an independent authority eliminates the possibility of protecting human rights and freedoms. A state dominated by disempowerment and rightlessness has been molded. And this will eventuate its complete political collapse.

Ekaterina Nenasheva
Facebook
January 18, 2021

As soon as the news flashed in my feed that a graduate student at Moscow State University, Azat Miftakhov, had been sentenced to six years in prison for breaking a window in a United Russia party office that he did not break, I began to get hysterical.

I had a good cry, and I will cry again, of course, but I really want to remind you that even newsfeed stories of this sort are a form of immense psychological pressure that even in this shape rattles us and skews our psyche. Of course, this is the effect that the system wants them to have on us.

Please remember that it is normal at a time like this to express any and all emotions. And it is important to express them by screaming, crying, running for several kilometers, or wherever they take you. It is very important not to keep your feelings bottled up inside.

If you have a psychologist or psychotherapist, then be sure to talk to them about it. If this is not the case and you need one-time support on this issue, please contact me: I will find you help, and I will be happy to talk to you myself.

Discussing such stories in the therapeutic space is very, very important. Our will is harder to break when we know how to handle our emotions. This skill is an absolutely political skill to have in this country.

I hug everyone who is in a lot of pain right now and send a thank-you to Azat’s absolutely heroic support community.

I hope he gets out early.

_____________________

Dmitry Gudkov
Facebook
January 18, 2020

Azat Miftakhov: six years in prison.

There have been mass arrests at the courthouse. (I have already lost count: Alexey Minyailo has just been nabbed).

At the same time, Navalny’s court-martial has been taking place right in the Khimki police station.

They are neither courts nor police, but uniformed people guilty of varying degrees of criminality.

Ulyukaev, who now knows everything about the “courts,” was wrong: there is no bottom [to their lawlessness and corruption], neither a fragile bottom, nor any other kind. They are in free fall.

They smashed the anarchists and anti-fascists, capable of direct action and forceful protest. They smashed the “peaceful, unarmed” opposition. Who’s next?

That’s right, institutionalized liberals, you guessed it. And you “equidistant” oligarchs, too. For whom, in your opinion, have the courts been broken? For you, that’s who. Because the sanctions over Navalny and all the other amazing adventures of the regime will deal a blow to [the Russian economy], there will be less money to go around, and you are to blame in advance for the fact that the security forces want to eat.

Don’t say later that you hadn’t been warned. People have been warning you for many years, but to no avail.

And somewhere out there, in the fog, lies hidden the abyss into which all these “courts” and “police” and the regime will fall. “Hidden” is the right word. The question is how many more people will die before the scoundrels fall into it.

Photo courtesy of Lev Schlosberg’s Facebook page. Translated by the Russian Reader