Another civil activist from the Gorno-Badakhshan Autonomous Oblast was detained in Moscow. According to people close to Mamadbek Atobekov, two employees of the Ministry of Internal Affairs of Tajikistan came to his house together with a squad of local police.
“Most likely, Mamadbek, like Oraz and Ramzi (the Vazirbekov brothers were illegally taken from Russia to Tajikistan on July 29) have already been taken to Dushanbe. He just defended the interests of his people on social networks,” one of his friends said on anonymous terms. “Together with him, Mansur Dildorbekov (who was in the apartment) was detained, but he was released a few hours later. From him we learned about the detention of Mamadbek.”
The Internet portal Pamir Daily News, which specializes in events taking place in GBAO, writes that over the past six months, at least 20 natives of Gorno-Badakhshan were abducted in Moscow and taken to Tajikistan. However, in Tajikistan they claim that all these citizens returned of their own free will. Thus, two days after their disappearance in Moscow, Oraz and Ramzi Vazirbekov declared in the courtyard of one of the departments of the Ministry of Internal Affairs that they arrived in Dushanbe of their own free will. Although a few months ago, both of them stated on social networks that they were afraid for their lives because of their political position. They wrote that if they ended up in Dushanbe, it would mean that they were abducted.
“In Moscow, operatives of the Ministry of Internal Affairs of Tajikistan work illegally. They operate under cover of the Deputy Director of the Bureau for the Coordination of Combating Organized Crime and Other Dangerous Types of Crime on the territory of the CIS member states on behalf of the Ministry of Internal Affairs of the Republic of Tajikistan,” says Russian human rights activist Sergei Voronin. “However, the operational-search activities of law enforcement agencies and special services from other states on the territory of Russia are prohibited in accordance with the current legislation. The Ministries of Internal Affairs of Russia and Tajikistan have long established cooperation on the issue of ‘expulsion of citizens who are undesirable to this or that regime, and a special operation allows the Russian special services to ignore violations of Russian laws.”
