Tajikistan: Human rights activists demand the release of a lawyer convicted for expressing his opinion
The international organizations Freedom Now and Proskauer Rose LLP called on the UN Working group on arbitrary detention to demand from Dushanbe the release of convicted Tajik lawyer Saidnuriddin Shamsiddinov, who paid with his freedom for posting critical posts on social networks about the illegal actions of some prosecutors and judges of Vakhsh district.
The appeal, distributed by the organizations on April 21, says that Shamsiddinov suffered only for the peaceful expression of his opinion and his sentence is a gross violation of the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights by the authorities of Tajikistan.
“The authorities of Tajikistan, through trumped-up charges, prevented them from denouncing corrupt officials. We are confident that the UN Working group on arbitrary detention will conclude that the authorities have grossly violated Shamsiddinov’s rights and will demand his immediate release,” Freedom Now legal officer Adam Lhedmat said in his statement.
At the end of 2020, Saidnuriddin Shamsiddinov was found guilty by the court under several articles of the Criminal Code, including an illegal deal with land, fraud and dissemination of false information. He was sentenced to 8.5 years in prison.
A year later, in November 2021, extra 8 months of imprisonment was added to Shamsiddinov’s term on a new charge – collaboration with Group 24, which is banned in the country.
Experts note that accusing citizens of a criminal offense, and sometimes of several crimes, is a well-established scheme of the authorities and officials of Tajikistan to get rid of political opponents, civil activists and simply objectionable people. Moreover, due to mutual responsibility in law enforcement structures, it’s almost impossible to achieve an acquittal in such cases. One such example is the case of activist Djunaydullo Khudoyorov, who was prosecuted in 2015 for exposing posts about official corruption in Rasht.
