One of the founders of the Islamic Renaissance Party banned in Tajikistan, 80-year-old Zubaydullo Rozik, who has been serving a 25-year sentence since 2016, was placed in a punishment cell.
His relatives say that the administration of the prison in Vahdat punished him for violating the regime of detention in the colony and sent him to a punishment cell for 15 days. What exactly he violated, the relatives were not told.
The punishment cell is considered a prison within a prison, and a convict placed there has no right to transfers or visits.
This is not the first placement of the IRPT veteran in the penalty block. In the fall of 2021, Zubaydullo Rozik and another convicted party activist, Rahmatullo Rajab, were placed in a punishment cell after publishing an open letter addressed to President Emomali Rahmon, in which they again insisted on their innocence and called for their case to be reviewed in the presence of international experts and journalists.
80-year-old Zubaydullo Rozik, like dozens of other IRPT activists, was detained in the fall of 2015 after an attempted military mutiny led by the former Deputy Minister of Defense of Tajikistan, Abdukhalim Nazarzoda. His trial took place in 2016.
Human rights activists note that after the September 2015 events, the authorities have also persecuted relatives of IRPT activists. So, in 2020, the Ismoili Somoni metropolitan district court sentenced Asroriddin, the son of Zubaydullo Rozik, to 5 years in prison for transferring money transfers received from Europe for relatives of convicted members of the Islamic party.
