The Magas District Court of Ingushetia has found the imam of the central mosque in Malgobek, Ingusehtia guilty of unlawful possession of weapons, sentencing him to two years of suspended imprisonment.
Nazir Dzeitov, 31, was sentenced on 19 September.
According to the investigation, at the end of July, a Makarov pistol and seven cartridges were discovered in Dzeitov’s flat. His arrest followed complaints from ‘vigilant residents’ who alleged that they had seen him with objects resembling firearms and that he had threatened others with them during conflicts.
Dzeitov himself stated that while in custody he was subjected to torture in order to ‘extract the necessary confessions’. In one of the videos published after his arrest, he says that he maintained contact with Ansar Garkho, the head of the Committee of Ingush Independence, an organisation banned in Russia.
The Committee of Ingush Independence was established in January 2023, and was included in the foreign agents registry a year later. It was later also included in the list of ‘undesirable organisations’ and in the register of terrorists and extremists in Russia.
According to available information, Dzeitov and Garkho have been acquainted since 2019: they allegedly met in Saudi Arabia, exchanged contacts and maintained correspondence, and Garkho is said to have asked him to ‘provide information’. After the arrest, Garkho himself claimed that he received a call from the imam’s number, stating that ‘people from the jamaat had been detained’ and informing him that Dzeitov was being tortured.
Case records from the trial in Magas on 19 September contained only a note about the hearing, without details of the verdict.
In April 2025, two other Ingush imams were detained — Mukhammad Tamaskhanov from Nazran and Magomed Sultygov from Karabulak. They were charged with failing to report a crime, allegedly for links with groups involved in attacks on security forces. The investigation believes that the imams may have provided ‘financial assistance under the guise of charity’ to the group of Amirkhan Gurazhev.
Gurazhev, a native of Malgobek, was, according to Russian security forces, considered the leader of an armed group involved in attacks on police officers and other crimes classified as terrorist. He was repeatedly placed on a wanted list, with a large reward offered for information about his whereabouts. In March 2024, he was killed along with several alleged accomplices during a counterterrorist operation in Karabulak.
Following their arrest, peaceful gatherings took place in the republic demanding their release, but no official response has been issued to the protests. Religious and public figures in Ingushetia stated that unlawful methods of interrogation had been used against Tamaskhanov. Sources from Fortanga, a regional independent media outlet close to religious circles, linked the prosecution of the imams to pressure on followers of Salafi Islam.
According to unconfirmed information, Dzeitov ‘was on friendly terms’ with the Imams Tamaskhanov and Sultygov.
The two imams were later released and have since resumed preaching.
Dzeitov is a graduate of the Islamic University of Medina in Saudi Arabia. Before his arrest, he was active on social media, with more than 18,000 followers on Instagram, where he published recordings of his sermons. He uses the nickname Abu Taymiya — after a 13th–14th century Islamic theologian. According to human rights defenders, Dzeitov is a follower of Salafism, which often draws the attention of the security services.
Elizaveta Chukharova
