Tajikistan: The case of the well-known blogger Chorshanbiev was sent to court
The case against Chorshanbe Chorshanbiev, a well-known blogger and MMA fighter, has been sent to court. According to law enforcement agencies, the investigation has collected a sufficient evidence base, although the charge of inciting ethnic hatred has been dropped from Chorshanbiev. He is accused of public calls for a violent change in the constitutional order of the Republic of Tajikistan (Article 307 of the Criminal Code of the Republic of Tajikistan).
Chorshanbe Chorshanbiev became widely known after his victory in 2015 at the 5th World Cup in full contact hand-to-hand combat among the national divisions of FCF-MMA. He was awarded the title of Grand Master of FCF-MMA, the third dan and a black belt.
After that, Chorshanbiev moved to Russia and competed in professional mixed martial arts. He became one of the most scandalous MMA athletes there, who got involved in various verbal skirmishes with rivals and even almost bit off his opponent’s ear, having received more than 3 million views on YouTube.
He was detained on December 3 last year in Russia after Chorshanbiev posted a video on social networks where he violates traffic rules and endangers others while moving at high speed through the Lefortovsky tunnel in Moscow.
It turned out that the sportsman had neither a Russian driver’s license nor insurance. Moreover, Toyota Camry was registered to another person, and this car already had more than a hundred unpaid fines. For all this, the athlete was fined 10,000 rubles, and also the decision was made to deport Chorshanbiev from the Russian Federation.
On the night of December 29, the plane with the deported Chorshanbiev flew to Dushanbe, where on the morning of December 30, special services were waiting for him at the gangway.
In the evening of the same day, the Prosecutor’s Office of Shohmansur district of Dushanbe announced that a criminal case had been initiated against Chorshanbiev under two articles of the Criminal Code of Tajikistan: 189 (“Inciting social, racial, national, regional, religious (confessional) hatred or discord”) and 307 (“Public calls for violent changes in the constitutional order of the Republic of Tajikistan”).
The fact is that after the murder of Gulbiddin Ziyobekov during the operation by the special services to detain the latter in Roshtkal, Chorshanbiev spoke on social networks and demanded “to protest against injustice and bring to justice all those responsible for the death of civilians”. Together with the late Ziyobekov, he competed for the sports club “Pamir” and therefore reacted very emotionally to the death of his friend and countryman.
Then hundreds of residents of GBAO went to protest against the special operation of the security forces of Tajikistan. During the protests, two more local residents were killed, several civilians were injured. Officials reported that 12 law enforcement officers were injured.
The Tajik NGO Coalition Against Torture and Impunity immediately assigned lawyers to Chorshanbiev, who reported that Chorshanbiev verbally and in writing denied the charges against him. “I didn’t have the goal of calling for the violent seizure of state power. I didn’t commit this crime, and didn’t know that my appeal could be considered a crime,” the athlete emphasized in a statement transmitted through lawyers. The father of the defendant believes that his son was deported from Russia and arrested in Tajikistan on purpose. According to him, this was a pre-planned action.
During the investigation, Chorshanbiev’s lawyers filed a protest against a comprehensive examination of the video with the participation of their client, which was conducted by specialists and experts from the Republican Center for Forensic Expertise, the Center for Strategic Studies under the President of Tajikistan and the Committee on Language and Terminology under the Government of Tajikistan. Then the lawyers demanded the involvement of a psychologist and a linguist of the Russian language.
The Ismoili Somoni district court in the capital said that they had received the criminal case against Chorshanbiev and that the lawyers and relatives of the defendant would be informed about the start of the trial.
