Albert Shafiev

Arrested in September 2016 on suspicion of involvement in a terrorist organisation. On 11 December 2017, he was sentenced to 12 years in a strict regime penal colony. In 2020, the Novotroitsk City Court toughened the punishment, sending Shafiev to prison for two years out of 12. This decision was based on 52 reports that he allegedly violated the conditions of his sentence in the colony. After two years, Shafiev was to be transferred from Balashov prison (Saratov region) back to a colony in the Orenburg region, with the penultimate point of the transfer being remand prison No. 1 in Orenburg. On 2 November 2022, a stranger called Shafiev's mother, introducing himself as a lawyer, and informed her that Shafiev was on hunger strike in this pre-trial detention centre. She asked the man to come to see her son, but, according to the woman's interlocutor, he was told at the centre that Shafiev had been transferred to an unknown location. Shafiev was later found in pre-trial detention centre No. 2 in Orsk.