North-Ossetian native Timur Tumgoev requests a visit of human rights defenders from Moscow

Timur Tumgoev, a native of Vladikavkaz, is serving a sentence in the Saratov Region on the charge of involvement with Syrian militant groupings. He faces regular provocations because of his faith and wearing a beard. The prisoner requested an advocate to ensure a visit to the correctional institution by human rights defenders from Moscow, Timur Tumgoev’s defender reported.

The “Caucasian Knot” has reported that Timur Tumgoev took part in a hunger strike of prisoners and cut himself in protest against the conditions of detention. The prisoner faces a new term under the article on disrupting the work of the correctional institution, says Timur Tumgoev’s sister and advocate Sergey Slepukhin.

On June 26, 2019, the court sentenced Timur Tumgoev to 18 years of imprisonment. According to the investigators’ version, in 2014, the man left for Georgia, then to Turkey, and from there – to Syria, where he joined militants of the “Jaysh al-Muhajirin wal-Ansar” grouping. The public prosecutors consider it a part of the “Islamic State” (a terrorist organization, banned in Russia by the court, – note of the “Caucasian Knot”). In 2016, Timur Tumgoev was detained in Ukraine, and in 2018, he was extradited to Russia. Timur Tumgoev confessed only to the fact of his stay in Turkey. He called the accusation unfair, but expressed his readiness to go to a penal colony “by the will of Allah.”

“His condition is normal, but there are cuts on his arms. He says that he is being regularly provoked because of his faith and wearing a beard,” the advocate reported.

Denis Sobolev, the chairman of the Saratov Public Oversight Commission (POC), noted that he had visited Timur Tumgoev a week ago. “Everything is fine with him. Let his family not worry,” Denis Sobolev said.