After arriving at Siberian’s frigid prison in November 2023, Nariman Dzhelyal ate nothing but bread and guruel.
Glasses-wearing, bearded Crimean Tatar community leaders are devout Muslims. He said most of the meals he was served included pork, and its consumption is prohibited by Islam.
“I took bread, but it wasn’t of good quality, I ate it with tea,” dzhelyal, who had been sentenced to 17 years in prison for “smuggling explosives” at a trial called the Kremlin, told Al Jazeera.
He denied all allegations against him.
Within days of his arrival in the monotonous town of Manusinsk, his meals had improved slightly.
Breakfast was tasteless, unsweetened gr, fish in dinner, only one of the lunches was pork.
But dieting is not the biggest problem facing tens of thousands of Muslims in Russia’s infamous, cruel prison system.
For almost a century, Soviet and Russian prisons have been described as a dark underworld ruled by unwritten laws.
The hardened criminal, known as the “crowned thief” or “black caste,” still gets elaborate tattoos, speaks sophisticated slang, and maintains a strict and ruthless hierarchy.
The prison they control is known as the “black prison.” There, guards conspire with “thieves” and turn their eyes to drug smuggling, card games and extreme violence.
“Red Prison” is a shaking sights by guards. Here, career criminals are denounced prison officials for inhumane circumstances such as torture, solitary confinement, malnutrition and rape.
However, in the last 20 years, tens of thousands of Muslims have been convicted of “terrorism,” “extremism,” or other crimes, and a third unit has begun to affect the Russian prison population.
About 15% of Russia’s population of 143 million are Muslims. They represent the fastest growing demographic of population decline.
Muslim prisoners make up almost the same proportion of the prison population. 31,000 out of 206,000 people reportedly said in November 2024 by Mufti Arbir Kurganov of Russia.
Since Moscow invaded Ukraine in 2022, the masses in Russian prisons have been cut by half.
Rights groups and media reports show that Russian prisoners who convert to Islam are “automatically” listed as terrifying suspects and sometimes promoted for “extremism.”
“If a prisoner converts to Orthodox Christianity and is baptized, he will be celebrated,” Anna Karetnikova, a former analyst with the Federal Services for the Execution of Punishments, the leading Russian organization that runs correctional facilities, told Al Jazeera.
If someone converts to Islam, he will “list as someone prone to extremism and his prison regime will be punished,” the intelligence agency will pay special attention to him, Karetnikova said.
Muslim immigrants from Central Asia travelling to Russia are particularly vulnerable to criminal persecution due to poor knowledge of Russian language, law and lifestyle, rights groups say.
Some reportedly were made to fight in Ukraine, while others claim that Russian police and prosecutors target and frame crimes committed by others.
Abdulaziz, a Moscow construction worker, told Al Jazeera in 2022 that police planted a synthetic drug known as “spices” on his younger brother Abdulmmin.
Abdulziz “confessed” the drug stash because they released electricity and slammed Abdulmmin with a plastic bottle, leaving no bruises behind.
The judge then sentenced Abdulmmin to five and a half years in the Ural Mountains region, but “We are fortunate enough ‘green’ prisoners there,” Abdulziz said.
“They proved themselves on the zone,” he said using prison slang, “And the other prisoners won’t ruin them… The only problem is the guards, but they accept the bribes and turn their eyes off when they have to.”
Abdulaziz refused to provide his last name and other details. Al Jazeera could not independently verify his claims.
Some Russian prisons are very suitable for Muslim prisoners.
Rights groups say in some prisons, meals and bed-remote schedules between 10pm and 6am have transformed early and late-night prayers into violations. Fasting during Ramadan can be difficult for some prisoners too.
However, there are attempts to educate prison staff.
“They must be taught the basics of Islam, they need to know the mentality of [Muslim] The inmates they work with. For some, Muslim prayers are the only manifestation of “extremism,” Azath Gaunut Man, an ethnic Tatar who converted to Islam in prisons and started a rights group to monitor the rights of Muslim prisoners, told the Kabkazki Uzel News website in 2020.
The situation often depends on the individual prison.
The Minosinsk watchers, whose Crimean Tatar leader dzhelyal served as a major part of his sentence, were generous.
He and other Muslims were allowed to pray and eat their Ramadan meal in their beds.
Unlike other prison Muslims in prisons where the Qur’an and Arabic are completely prohibited, they can obtain the Qur’an and Muslim books from prison libraries, and only certain Russian translations are permitted, rights groups say.
According to Dzhelyal, some Muslims who have been imprisoned refuse to engage in illegal activities while in prison, including smoking, cell phones, smuggling alcohol and drugs.
“It’s true that there are Muslims who say, ‘We’re not of any use to these criminal rules for you.’ because [these rules] In many cases, it can contradict the norms that all Muslims live,” dzhelyal said.
The number of Muslim prisoners in Russian prisons began to increase in the early 2000s, when the Second War began in Chechnya.
The Kremlin cracked down on other Northern Caucasus states, particularly the multi-ethnic Dagestan, what is known as “extremists.” Thousands have been imprisoned.
Decades later, Russian authorities and the prison government have yet to discover “any response” to the challenge, analyst Karentikova said. “There is no attempt to understand anything, just sticks and carrots.
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