A Kazakh citizen spent more than two months under arrest in Dagestan.

An LGBT* representative from Kazakhstan was detained in Dagestan based on a denunciation and, after being held in a pretrial detention center for over two and a half months, was deported. He believes police in Makhachkala are using informants to identify and persecute LGBT* representatives.

A 28-year-old man, who identified himself as Murad (name changed), claimed to be a citizen of Kazakhstan and had come to Dagestan to visit relatives. In early November 2025, friends came to visit him, including Timur (name changed), who openly identifies as LGBT*. The day after their visit, two criminal investigation officers visited Murad. According to them, Timur told police he was beaten in Murad's apartment.

Murad denied the accusations, but he was taken to the station anyway. They demanded that I unlock my phone and threatened that if I refused, it would be sent for examination for a month, the Telegram channel "Ostorozhno, Novosti" reported on February 11.

"I unlocked my phone because I have nothing to hide. They spent an hour rummaging through my phone, accessing all my messages, all my social media. They found a Telegram conversation, probably three years old, in which I sent intimate photos to a friend," Murad said.

He claims that because of these photos, they tried to charge him with producing and distributing pornography involving a minor. 1 However, Murad denies that such photos were on his phone. The officers forbade him from making any phone calls and began asking him about the acquaintance he'd been sending his photos to.

According to Murad, one of the security officers told him that Timur had denounced him for his arrest. "He gave the police my address and said I was producing child pornography," Murad explained.

He said the officers were confused by the information that he was a Kazakh citizen. But afterward, they took him for a medical examination, convincing him that he needed to refuse the procedure to be released. Murad was hesitant, but ultimately complied. As a result, he was arrested for two days on charges of disobeying police and ordered deported from Russia.

Murad tried to appeal the court's decision, but to no avail. He said he was ultimately held illegally in the detention center for 76 days, where he "almost died." "I lived in the Russian Federation for 10 years and committed no offense. My father is a Russian citizen," Murad stated.

He was then taken to Kazakhstan. Murad believes that while he was in detention, a criminal case was likely being prepared against him for distributing pornography with minors. Throughout this time, Murad's relatives, representatives of Kazakhstan, and lawyers contacted the Dagestani police, demanding information about the detainee's fate. The Kazakh believes that police in Makhachkala are using informants to identify and persecute LGBT* individuals.

The Caucasian Knot has repeatedly written about the practice of persecuting gay men in Dagestan, including through denunciations and staged meetings. In particular, in 2024, after the arrest of porn actor Matvey Volodin, security forces in Dagestan launched a campaign against gay men and organized raids against them. One of those detained, Yusuf, fled Russia after being forced to cooperate with security forces. Gay men in Dagestan were already in danger even before local security forces staged provocations and raids against them, and after the arrest of gay blogger Matvey Volodin, the threats increased exponentially. However, human rights activists interviewed by the "Caucasian Knot" noted that law enforcement agencies have no real grounds for opening cases against gay men under the extremism statute. Caucasian Knot also reported that Salman Mukayev, a native of Grozny, was forced to flee the republic after being tortured: in February 2020, security forces forced him to confess to relationships with men and sign a cooperation agreement. Mukayev left Russia, despite being on the wanted list and fearing extradition, as he himself stated in December 2021. In August 2022, the Chechen Investigative Committee forwarded the torture complaint to the agency whose employees Mukayev had complained about. On May 23, 2023, the SOS Crisis Group reported that Mukayev was under threat of deportation from Armenia, but in January 2024, a court in Yerevan ordered the authorities to grant him refugee status. Details are provided in the "Caucasian Knot" reference material "The Case of Salman Mukayev".

* The LGBT movement has been designated an extremist organization.

** have been added to the register of foreign agents.

*** Meta (which owns Facebook, Instagram, and WhatsApp) is banned in Russia.