Aysoltan Niyazova. Photo: social media
Pussy Riot member Aysoltan Niyazova has had her name removed from Interpol’s Red Notices for wanted persons more than two decades after she was added to the database, she told Novaya Gazeta Europe on Wednesday.
Niyazova’s native Turkmenistan first submitted a request for her arrest to Interpol in 2002, accusing her of embezzling over $40 million while she chaired the country’s Central Bank. She has always denied the charges against her.
Despite being born in the Turkmen capital Ashgabat, Niyazova has never had Turkmen citizenship and held a Soviet passport until the collapse of the USSR in 1991, after which, having moved to Vladivostok, she became a Russian citizen.
In 2011, Niyazova was detained in Switzerland on an Interpol warrant, though the Swiss authorities later declined to extradite her to Turkmenistan, citing human rights concerns. They did, however, approve her extradition to Russia instead, where she was convicted on embezzlement charges and spent nearly six years in prison.
Nevertheless, Niyazova’s name remained on Interpol’s Red Notices, which led to her being detained multiple times in Slovenia, Croatia and Poland between 2022 and 2023. In 2023, Interpol rejected a request for her name to be removed from the list, saying that she had provided insufficient evidence that she faced torture or death if she were extradited to Turkmenistan.
Niyazova believes that the charges against her are all politically motivated and due to the political activism of her late father, Kurbanmurad Niyazov, a member of the Turkmen opposition and an outspoken human rights advocate, who was arrested in Turkmenistan in 2002 and later died in custody.
