After arriving at Siberia’s cold prison in November 2023, Nariman dzhelyal He only eats bread and sin.

The leader of the Crimea community bearded, a religious Muslim. He said that most of the meals provided contain pork, which are prohibited from consuming Islam.

“I just took bread, it was not of good quality, and I ate it with tea,” which was sentenced to 17 years in prison because of the “bombing of a natural gas pipeline” and “smuggling explosives” in the trial of Ukraine called Karimin, which was checked, told the island.

He denied all the allegations against him.

Within days after arriving in the soft Minusinsk city, his diet became marginally better.

Breakfast meals were tasteless, or delicious, and what contained fish, and it was only one of the lunch dishes with pork.

But the diet is not so largely the biggest problem faced by thousands of Muslims in the harsh prison system in Russia.

Nearly a century ago, Soviet and Russian prisons have been described as a dark sanctuary that governed unwritten laws.

The connected criminals known as the “crowned thieves” or “black class” are still tattooing, talking about an advanced colloquial, and they maintain a strict hierarchy that is ruthless with themselves.

Prisons they control as “black prisons” are known, where the guards correspond to “crowned thieves” and they turn away from drug trafficking, paper games and severe violence.

“Red Prisons” is controlled by the guards. Here, professional criminals accused prison officials of inhuman circumstances, including torture, solitary confinement, malnutrition and rape.

But in the past two decades, a third force began to affect the population of Russia in the prisoners, where tens of thousands of Muslims were convicted of “terrorism” or “extremism” or other crimes.

About 15 percent of Russia’s 143 million Muslims. It represents the fastest growing in demographic amid a low population.

Muslim prisoners constitute almost the same percentage of prison population – 31,000 out of 206,000, according to a Russian Grand Mufti Albert Kragan in November 2024.

The prison residents in Russia have made more than half since Moscow invaded Ukraine in 2022.

According to media rights groups and media reports, Russian convicts who are automatically turned into Islam are included as a terrorist suspect and sometimes the rulings were extended for “extremism”.

“If the convict is converted to Orthodox Christianity, it will be celebrated,” said Anna Cartenicova, a former federal service analyst for the execution of the punishment.

If a person turns into Islam, he will be included as a person who is exposed to extremism, and his prison management will be punished, “and Carretnikova said, who also worked in an agency supervising the prison in Moscow and in the memorial rights group.

Muslim immigrants from Central Asia Those traveling to Russia to work, they are especially exposed to criminal persecution because of their bad knowledge of the Russian language and the laws and ways of life.

Some were made to fight in Ukraine, It is said By force, others claimed that the Russian police and prosecutors targeted them and framing them for the crimes committed by others.

Abdel Aziz, a constructive worker in Moscow, He said Al -Jazeera, which the police planted artificial drugs known as “spices” on his younger brother, Abdel -Malinin, in 2022.

They were electricity and hit Abdul -Mallamin with plastic water bottles that do not leave any bruises until “admit” to put the drug cache under the garden seats, as Abdulaziz claimed.

Then the judge sentenced Abd al -Muloumin to be imprisoned for a period of five and a half years in the Ural Mountains area, but “fortunately, there is enough” green “prisoners there, in reference to Muslim convicts.

“They have proven themselves in the region,” he said, using a colloquial term for prison, “and other convicts do not tamper with them … The only problem is the guards, but they accept bribes and turn a blind eye when they have to do so.”

Abdel Aziz refused to provide his last name and other details. Al -Jazeera could not independently verify its allegations.

Some Russian prisons are very suitable for Muslim prisoners.

Rights groups say that in some prisons, the tables prohibit eating tables and leave the family between 10 pm and 6 in the morning, and they turn every morning early in the morning and pray late in the evening into a violation. Fasting during Ramadan can be difficult for some convicts.

However, there are attempts to educate prison staff.

“They must be taught the basics of Islam, they must know a mentality [Muslim] Guests with them. For some, the Islamic prayer alone is a manifestation of “extremism”, “said Azat Gonotinov, an ethnic man who turned into Islam in prison and a group of rights monitoring the rights of Muslim convicts began, Kavkazsky Uzel News on the Internet in 2020.

The situation often depends on individual prisons.

The guards were in Minusinsk, where the Crimea leader served the Tatars dzhelyal most of his punishment, lenient.

He and other Muslims allowed prayer and eating their meals in Ramadan in their family.

They can obtain Quranic and Muslim books from the Prison Library – unlike Muslims in other prisons, where the Qur’an and Arabic are completely banned, and only some Russian translations are allowed.

According to Dzhelyal, some Muslims refuse to prison in illegal activities during prison, such as smuggling cigarettes, mobile phones, alcohol and drugs.

In fact, there are Muslims who say: “We have no benefit to these criminal rules for you. ” because [these rules] It often contradicts the norms that every Muslim lives according to. ”

The number of Muslim prisoners in Russian prisons began to increase in the early first decade of the twentieth century, when the second war began in Chechnya.

The Kremlin broke what the “extremists” called in other provinces of northern Caucasus, especially in the multi -ethnic Dagestan. Thousands prison.

After decades, the Russian authorities and prison administrations did not find “any response at all” to this challenge, analyst Karenticova said. “There is nothing but sticks and carrots, no attempts to understand something, to put some strategy.”