The Southern District Military Court in Rostov-on-Don has found a 23-year-old from Maykop, Adygea guilty of recruiting for the Islamic State, sentencing him to 14 years in prison.
The young man, identified as Shamil Aliev, is believed to have been sentenced in May, but the state-run agency TASS, citing the press service of the Federal Security Service (FSB) Directorate for the Republic of Adygea, reported about the trial on Monday.
Aliev must serve the first three years in prison and the following 11 years in a high-security penal colony, according to TASS.
According to the court and the FSB, Aliev, being a member of the terrorist structure Islamic State, which is banned in Russia, conducted active propaganda and recruitment activities.
According to the investigation, between 11–30 August 2024, Aliev held systematic ideological ‘introductory lectures’ for his acquaintance, a citizen of Afghanistan. He allegedly showed him propaganda materials, explained the key ideas of the Islamic State, justified its activities, attempted to persuade him of the correctness of its ideology, and invited him to join the organisation.
The criminal case was opened under the articles on facilitating terrorist activities and making public calls for terrorism. In court, Aliev was also found guilty under the article on ‘participation in a terrorist organisation’.
The verdict has not yet entered into legal force and may be appealed.
According to the case file on the court’s website, Aliev’s case was first considered in February 2025. The verdict was delivered at the end of May, after which Aliev’s lawyer tried to appeal.
Aliev is a native of the village of Urkhuchi in the Akushinsky district of Daghestan. He was added to the list of terrorists and extremists maintained by the Russian Federal Financial Monitoring Service (Rosfinmonitoring) in September 2024.
Cases involving the Islamic State are not uncommon in the North Caucasus.
In July 2024, an extremist preparing to carry out a terrorist attack in Maykop was accused of recruiting a student from Syria into the ranks of the Islamic State. Eighteen-year-old Tajik Idris Idibekov allegedly planned to set fire to the Michael the Archangel Church in Maykop and then fly to Istanbul, for which he had bought a ticket.
In his conversations, Idibekov propagated ‘global jihad’ and insisted on the correctness of the actions of terrorists.
In May 2024, another resident of Maykop, Farkhad Akhmadov, was found guilty of recruiting for the Islamic State. He was sentenced to 17 years of imprisonment. According to the investigation, he propagated its activities, held discussions with a number of people, and posted photographs, videos and audio materials about the terrorist organisation in a group chat. He also corresponded with them, attempting to encourage terrorist activities in the region.
In the same year, in April, two local residents were arrested in Kabarda–Balkaria who, according to the investigation, held meetings in Nalchik to recruit locals into the Islamic State.
Elizaveta Chukharova
