Singer Mireille Mathieu was asked to stand up for mathematician Azat Miftakhov, since Alexander Bastrykin is her fan

The Solidarity Committee with Mathematician Azat Miftakhov, Solidarité FreeAzat, sent a public letter to Mireille Mathieu asking for help in freeing political prisoner Azat Miftakhov, a mathematician who is serving a sentence for justifying terrorism.

As the committee notes, Mathieu has friendly relations with the head of the Investigative Committee of Russia, Alexander Bastrykin. He dedicated poems and songs to her, repeatedly invited her to Russia, where she was met at the highest level. Moreover, based on the statement of Bastrykin himself, which he made in 2020 on his VKontakte page, she is a member of the public council under the Investigative Committee of the Russian Federation.

Azat Miftakhov was arrested in 2019, and in January 2021, a Moscow court sentenced him to six years in a general regime penal colony on charges of "hooliganism committed by prior conspiracy motivated by political hatred." According to investigators, in January 2018, Miftakhov and a group of anarchists broke the window of the United Russia office in the Khovrino district of Moscow and threw a smoke bomb there.

In September 2023, Miftakhov was detained upon leaving the penal colony under a new article — justification of terrorism. Azat Miftakhov became at least the 53rd person to be charged with a criminal case for his statements about the arson of the Arkhangelsk FSB building. Despite the fact that the criminal case about the arson of the Arkhangelsk FSB building by 17-year-old Mikhail Zhlobitsky was closed in May 2020 due to his death, the case was not closed. Criminal cases were opened in connection with comments or even overheard private conversations in which people did not condemn this arson. Miftakhov was among them.

In 2023, the administration of Kirov IK-17 recognized Miftakhov as a malicious violator of the regime, and he was transferred to a detachment with strict conditions of detention, which provide for fewer visits and packages, as well as a ban on phone calls.

In May, Miftakhov's wife Elena Gorban, with her husband's permission, told the press that he had been transferred to the "offended" caste back in 2021. This was arranged by FSB officers who gave intimate photos of Miftakhov to prisoners.