The Tbilisi City Court has ruled to extradite Mikhail Timofeev—an associate and former assistant to former Khabarovsk Krai Governor Sergei Furgal—to Russia, the Telegram channel Tbilisi Life reports. The ruling can be appealed to the Supreme Court within seven days.
The associate of Furgal, whose criminal prosecution triggered mass protests in Khabarovsk in 2020–2021, arrived in Georgia in March 2024 and immediately sought asylum, citing political persecution in the Russian Federation. However, authorities in Tbilisi rejected his application.
In 2023, Russian authorities arrested Timofeev in absentia as part of an investigation into the 2004 murder of entrepreneur Evgeny Zorya; pro-government media have referred to him as a “crime boss.”
The Russian national was later detained upon a motion by the Georgian Prosecutor’s Office, which cited a request from Interpol’s Moscow bureau and a so-called Red Notice (human rights advocates maintain that the notice had been canceled, a fact they claim was known to the Georgian side).
The Memorial Human Rights Defence Centre has officially recognized Timofeev’s prosecution in Russia as politically motivated. Mariana Katzarova, the UN Special Rapporteur on the situation of human rights in the Russian Federation, addressed a letter to the Georgian authorities stressing the impermissibility of his persecution.
The 60-year-old Mikhail Timofeev is officially registered as having a Category III disability and suffers from severe medical conditions, including heart failure and hepatitis C. His health deteriorated during a previous period of incarceration in Russia, where he was subjected to torture—a fact officially corroborated by a ruling of the European Court of Human Rights (ECHR), which declared that punishment unlawful.
Timofeev himself stated:
“Sending me from Georgia to the Russian Federation is a gross violation of my rights as a person with a disability, as well as of Articles 6, 7, and 10 of the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights.”
