Four Makhachkala residents confessed under torture to worshiping Hitler and being involved with the Azov Regiment*.

In March 2023, Dagestan Interior Minister Abdurashid Magomedov, in his annual report, announced the liquidation of a "terrorist group" of four Makhachkala residents. According to the minister, the detainees "had close contacts" with the Azov battalion* and were planning "a series of high-profile actions" and crossing the front line to participate in combat operations against Russian troops, according to a Chernovik publication dated March 30, 2023. The defendants claim they were brutally tortured after their arrest and that the case was completely fabricated, the human rights project OVD-Info reported on October 1 (they have been listed as foreign agents by the Russian Ministry of Justice). Journalists spoke with two of the defendants, Magomed Dzhavatkhanov and Ruslan Akkayev, both 30 years old. They met at a philosophical and intellectual club at the National Library in Makhachkala and became best friends. Before his arrest, Dzhavatkhanov developed his own cultural project, High Caucasus, and participated in eco-cleanup days. Akkayev worked as a history and social studies teacher at a private school in Makhachkala.

According to Magomed Dzhavatkhanov, he was detained on the afternoon of December 19, 2022, in the village of Shamkhal by plainclothes officers wearing masks and balaclavas. During the arrest, he was beaten on the legs and head, and in the car, they "introduced themselves as Kadyrov's men," he notes. "I said, 'Are you probably going to kill me in the basement?'" "But I understood that these weren't Kadyrov's men," the publication quotes him as saying. The young man was taken to a department of one of the security forces and subjected to electric shocks, and was also threatened with rape with a mop.

Later, his friend, Ruslan Akkayev, was also brought there; he had been detained after leaving work. A bag was placed over his head and his hands were bound with tape during the arrest. Akkayev was initially tortured with electric shocks in Dzhavatkhanov's presence, but was then taken away, though Magomed heard his screams. According to Ruslan, he, too, was threatened with rape with a mop.

According to the official version of events, all four defendants were detained late in the evening in different areas of Makhachkala with identical weapons: each was found to have a "Makarov traumatic pistol, converted into a firearm," with eight rounds of ammunition. However, fingerprints were not found on any of the pistols. "They gave us guns, wiped them on our bodies, our armpits, and in the end, there were only traces of sweat on the barrel. There were no traces of sweat glands on the handle, and no fingers at all," explained Magomed Dzhavatkhanov.

The two other defendants, Khadzhimurad Abdulaev and Rajab Nazarov, were also best friends; they knew Magomed and Ruslan, and the four spent time together several times. Abdulaev, who was a fan of black metal music, is considered by investigators to be the "leader of a terrorist group": through his passion, he was linked to a public spokesman for Azov*, the bass player of the black metal band.

According to the security forces, the defendants were preparing to set fire to a military unit by studying instructions for making a Molotov cocktail on a Ukrainian media resource. "We opposed the war and military action, since the Ukrainian Armed Forces..." “Our comrades-in-arms of Nazi ideology fought, among other things,” Nazarov asserts in his testimony.

“After I read Adolf Hitler’s book, I realized that we were very similar, and I decided to imitate him; he became my idol,” Ruslan Akkayev’s interrogation report states. “My eyes were closed, my hands were already handcuffed, my hand was simply pointed to the right place and told to sign,” Ruslan explained.

According to the prosecution, all the defendants had read the philosophical works of Friedrich Nietzsche, which led them to adopt neo-Nazi views and support for Ukraine. During searches of Magomed Dzhavatkhanov’s home, security forces seized a T-shirt, a chevron, and a sticker with the Azov* symbols, and in Ruslan Akkayev’s apartment, camouflage clothing and “chevrons with Nazi symbols.” According to the defendants, these The items were planted on them. "Others had a Ukrainian flag, someone had a chevron of the Ukrainian railway troops, apparently in case he suddenly wanted to work as a railway worker. "Some more Spartak stickers, those belong to another accomplice," Magomed noted ironically.

The text of Magomed Dzhavatkhanov's interrogation claims that he allegedly "in-depth studied neo-Nazi ideology" since the age of 18, at some point realized that "the current constitutional order does not correspond to the ideology of National Socialism," and set his goal of leaving for Ukraine to join the ranks of the Azov Battalion*. The same document, in addition to plans to set fire to a military unit in Makhachkala, described a plan to blow up a railway in the Krasnodar Territory, but this is no longer mentioned in the indictment.

* is designated a terrorist organization, its activities are prohibited in Russia by a decision of the Supreme Court of the Russian Federation.

** Meta (owner of Facebook, Instagram, and WhatsApp) is banned in Russia.