Aysoltan Niyazova. Photo from social media
Polish border guards detained Russian citizen Aysoltan Niyazova, a member of the Pussy Riot art collective, on September 6 at the request of Interpol on behalf of Turkmenistan, Gundogar reported.
Niyazova was born in Ashgabat and moved to Russia in 1995. She has never held Turkmen citizenship. In the early 2000s, she was implicated in a case involving the theft of $41 million from the Central Bank of Turkmenistan. According to Turkmen authorities, while serving as chair of the board of Moscow’s Index Bank, Niyazova participated in transferring and laundering the stolen funds through Germany’s Deutsche Bank.
In 2011, Swiss authorities detained Niyazova and extradited her to Moscow. A Russian court convicted her and sentenced her to six years in prison. After her release, she remained in Russia but later left for Europe following the launch of Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine.
She first met Pussy Riot member Maria Alyokhina in a detention center. After her release from prison, Niyazova joined Pussy Riot at protest rallies.
Since 2022, she has been detained several times in Europe under a red notice issued by Ashgabat through Interpol. In Slovenia, she was released after 10 hours, and in Croatia, she spent two days in custody before being freed. Polish authorities have not yet clarified what measures they may take against her.
On September 8, Niyazova was released. According to her lawyer, the prosecutor took into account her humanitarian residence permit in Lithuania and a court ruling she won in Croatia in 2022, Ezh (designated as a foreign agent) reported.
Her lawyers had previously appealed to Interpol to remove her from the wanted list, arguing that she had already served her sentence and was never a Turkmen citizen. However, the international police organization has left Ashgabat’s request in place.
