On July 15, the Prosecutor General’s Office of Tajikistan announced at a press conference why journalists and bloggers Zavkibek Saidamini and Abdusattor Pirmukhammadzoda were detained.
The representative of the Prosecutor General’s Office Sharif Kurbonzoda said that Zavkibek Saidamini was detained on suspicion of collaborating with the Islamic Renaissance Party of Tajikistan and the Group 24 banned in the country, he was charged with public calls for the violent overthrow of the government.
“As for Abdusattor Pirmuhammadzoda, he was detained for disobeying the demands of a police officer, and until July 19 he will remain in custody. He has not yet been charged,” said an employee of the Prosecutor General’s Office.
Recall that from the moment the journalists were detained, their relatives were denied access to them, they were not even informed about their whereabouts.
On July 14, the Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ) also expressed concern about the fate of journalists, calling on Dushanbe to release information about the whereabouts of the detainees and immediately release them. “Keeping the whereabouts of the detained bloggers in the strictest confidence is unacceptable and is a blatant disregard for the country’s legislation,” said Gulnoza Said, CPJ’s Europe and Central Asia Program Coordinator.
Recall, on July 7, Abdusattor Pirmukhammadzoda was summoned to the department of the Organized Crime Control Department of the Ministry of Internal Affairs for the city of Vahdat and was subjected to intensive interrogation for several hours. They searched his house, confiscated his mobile phone, and took a receipt that he would not disclose the details of the interrogation to anyone.
After information about Pirmuhammadzoda appeared in a number of media on July 8, in the evening of the same day he was again summoned to the Organized Crime Control Department and no one saw Abdusattor again. On the same day, on the evening of July 8, another journalist and social media activist, Zavkibek Saidamini, was detained. Both are former employees of the State Television and Radio Broadcasting Company and have been blogging in recent years, they actively spoke on social networks in support of their arrested colleagues Daleri Imomali and Abdullo Gurbati.
