A group of mathematicians from universities in the United States, Europe, Japan, and Russia has commemorated the 30th birthday of jailed Tatar scientist Azat Miftakhov, his fifth while incarcerated on charges he rejects, with a raft of messages and renewed calls for his freedom.
The group on March 21 posted dozens of photos and messages on a website set up to bring attention to Miftakhov's case, which has widely been rejected as politically motivated.
Moscow's Golovinsky district court sentenced Miftakhov, who was then a postgraduate mathematics student at Moscow State University, to six years in prison in January 2021 after finding him guilty of involvement in an arson attack on the ruling United Russia party's office in Moscow in 2018.
Miftakhov has vehemently denied the charges while his lawyers say he is being persecuted for his anarchist beliefs and support for political prisoners.
The group of academics wishing Miftakhov well includes professors, teachers, and postgraduate and graduate students from Harvard University, the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA), the French Academy of Science at Sorbonne University, the Max-Planck-Institut in Germany, the University of Tokyo, and Moscow State University.
RFE/RL correspondents reported that leaflets congratulating Miftakhov on his birthday and reminding people about his case were distributed in several Russian cities including Saratov, Perm, Rostov-on-Don, Yekaterinburg, and Novosibirsk.
Miftakhov was arrested in early 2019 and accused of helping make an improvised bomb found in the city of Balashikha near Moscow.
He was released several days after the initial charge failed to hold, but was rearrested immediately and charged with being involved in the attack on an office of the United Russia political party in January 2018.
The Public Monitoring Commission, a human rights group, has said that Miftakhov's body bore the signs of torture, which the mathematician claimed were the result of investigators unsuccessfully attempting to force him to confess to the bomb-making charge.
A prominent Russian human rights organization, Memorial, recognized Miftakhov a political prisoner at the time, while 2,500 mathematicians from fifteen countries then signed a letter urging the International Congress of Mathematicians (ICM) to assist in Miftakhov's release.