Azat is a 33-year-old mathematician who was doing a PhD at Moscow State University, Russia's top university, when he was arrested in 2019. He was accused of being one of a group who broke a window at an office of Putin's United Russia party in 2018 and threw a smoke bomb inside; the main evidence came from a secret witness, and he was sentenced to six years for 'hooliganism'. On the day he walked out of the colony in September 2023, security officers arrested him again, saying he had spoken approvingly to cellmates about a 2018 bombing while watching the TV news, and a military court gave him four more years for 'justifying terrorism'. In April 2026 he was moved to a colony above the Arctic Circle, where he says guards beat and tortured him; a court has since ordered investigators to look into his complaint. Mathematicians around the world have campaigned for him, and he keeps working on maths problems in his cell.
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Azat is a 33-year-old mathematician who was doing a PhD at Moscow State University, Russia's top university, when he was arrested in 2019. He was accused of being one of a group who broke a window at an office of Putin's United Russia party in 2018 and threw a smoke bomb inside; the main evidence came from a secret witness, and he was sentenced to six years for 'hooliganism'. On the day he walked out of the colony in September 2023, security officers arrested him again, saying he had spoken approvingly to cellmates about a 2018 bombing while watching the TV news, and a military court gave him four more years for 'justifying terrorism'. In April 2026 he was moved to a colony above the Arctic Circle, where he says guards beat and tortured him; a court has since ordered investigators to look into his complaint. Mathematicians around the world have campaigned for him, and he keeps working on maths problems in his cell.
