A prayer room for Muslims and an Islam study class has opened in the notorious Butyrskaya pretrial detention prison in Moscow, Interfax reported.
The project was funded by the country’s mufti council, a prison spokesman said, adding that about 35 percent of inmates were Muslim.
A Russian Orthodox Christian church has operated on the premises since the late 1980s, and a prayer room for adherents of Judaism is in the works, he added.
Butyrskaya, which faces public backlash after the death of lawyer Sergei Magnitsky in 2009, is attempting something of a rebranding, opening an online store and even planning to install tanning beds.
(MT)