Moscow Student Sent To Pretrial Detention Following Torture Claims

RFE
13 Feb 2019, 03:07 GMT+10

Azat Miftakhov, a mathematics student at Moscow State University who says he was tortured while being detained on suspicion of being a bomb maker, has been remanded in pretrial custody on hooliganism charges.

A Moscow court on February 12 ruled that Miftakhov must remain in pretrial detention until March 7.

Miftakhovs lawyer, Svetlana Sidorkina, says he is now charged with involvement in an arson attack on the office of the ruling United Russia party in Moscow in January 2018.

The 25-year-old Miftakhov was initially arrested on February 1 on allegations that he was involved in the making of an improvised explosive device found in January in the town of Balashikha near Moscow.

He was released on February 7 but rearrested immediately.

Two days earlier, the Public Monitoring Commission, a human rights group, said Miftakhov had torture marks on his body, which he said were the results of investigators unsuccessfully attempting to force him to confess to the bomb-making charges.

Based on reporting by Interfax and TASS

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