Nadezhda Kravtsova, the lawyer of mathematician and Russian political prisoner Azat Miftakhov, has filed an administrative lawsuit against the “Polar Owl” Penal Colony No. 18, RusNews reports. The Insider reviewed the lawsuit, which alleges that colony staff read the lawyer’s papers and seized Miftakhov’s reply to Kravtsova, along with notes containing the names of staff members and inmates who Miftakhov says were involved in his torture. The colony later described the lawyer’s actions as “antisocial behavior.” Kravtsova is seeking to have the confiscation of documents and the official warning she received after meeting with Miftakhov declared unlawful.
The incident in question occurred on May 7, three days after The Insider published a detailed account by Miftakhov of the torture regime at Polar Owl. The political prisoner said that Federal Penitentiary Service (FSIN) staff and inmates beat him on the heels with a wooden mallet, tortured him with electric shocks, strangled him, and threatened him with sexual violence. Miftakhov also named the alleged participants in the torture, and The Insider was able to identify them.
According to Kravtsova’s lawsuit, on the indicated date she visited Miftakhov as his lawyer. During their confidential meeting, she passed along questions from Miftakhov’s wife, Elena Gorban, who is also one of his defense lawyers but was nevertheless denied visitation. Miftakhov wrote out answers and gave them to Kravtsova. As she was leaving the colony, an “entire squad” of staff stopped her. The officer on duty, I. I. Prishchepov, forcibly took the folder of documents from her and “leafed through and reread every page,” after which he confiscated Miftakhov’s writings along with several pages of Kravtsova’s personal notes.
