Mayor of Makhachkala, cell 24

On June 2, Moscow's Basmanny Court arrested Said Amirov, the mayor of Makhachkala, for two months. The investigation suspects the mayor of involvement in organizing the murder in December 2011. Head of the Investigative Department of the Investigative Committee for the Soviet District of Makhachkala Arsen Gadzhibekov

“A disabled person in a wheelchair has already visited us,” an employee of the Lefortovo pre-trial detention center tells me. - That was Yuri Shutov, he is also called the "night mayor of St. Petersburg." Amirov is the real mayor. Dagestan".

Four of us go into a small cell - about eight meters - two employees, me and Lidia Borisovna, a human rights activist from the POC*, who often visits Lefortovo with me. We are met by a large gray-haired man in a wheelchair. In shorts and a t-shirt. On the legs are large knitted socks. It's a quarantine cell, and Said Amirov, secretary of United Russia's republican political council and recently voted the best mayor in a competition for Russian municipalities, sits alone in it.

“Look at me,” he complains, “only my arms move.”

Amirov lifts his T-shirt and shows the scars resulting from fifteen assassination attempts.

I can't believe that this man lived in a luxurious mansion until recently. And now he complains to human rights activists that he cannot sleep on a narrow bed: he is afraid to fall.

“Let my sons bring me a mattress, make me an ottoman so that I can transfer myself from the stroller to it, so that I can sleep normally, otherwise I lie bent over all night,” he asks the jailers. Amirov's height is 1 meter 82 cm, and the bunk in the Lefortovo pre-trial detention center is 1 meter 80 cm in length.

Since June 2, this one of the most powerful people in Dagestan has been dependent on Lefortovo employees. Without their help, he can do nothing. They serve him as both guards and nurses. For walks and investigative actions, Amirov is carried in his arms. If he needs to go to the toilet or transfer from a wheelchair to a bed, he should call for a corps officer (the officer who watches over the prisoners). The chamber has a special switch, with which you can signal for help. But Amirov cannot reach him, sitting in a wheelchair.

“They drove me here: supposedly I killed someone,” he says. - And I am a disabled person of the first group, I asked for house arrest. I have a place to live in Moscow."

Amirov's lawyers have already stated that their client could die in prison and become a second Magnitsky.

By law, such patients must be kept under house arrest. For example, Colonel Dmitry Pavlyuchenko, accused of a similar crime - aiding and abetting a murder, was allowed to go home pending trial. Although he is not disabled, he seems to be suffering from epilepsy. True, he was accused of murdering not an investigator from Bastrykin's department, but Anna Politkovskaya. Why keep a disabled person in prison? Knowledgeable people explain: if Amirov were free, he would mobilize remarkable connections and resources in his support. Sitting in a wheelchair in a cell, bludgeoning into the "feeder" to be put on the toilet, this is not so easy to do.

They say that in Lefortovo they will bargain with the mayor of Makhachkala. Big money is at stake, his influence in Dagestan and his own life.