Concern at Decade-Old Mutiny Trials in Tajikistan

Memories of an uprising in northern Tajikistan in 1998 have come back to haunt the country, with the conviction of three men found guilty of taking part in the rebellion. Questions are being asked about why these cases are being raised only now, 12 years after the disturbances.

Although the country had just come out of a five-year civil war pitting the state against Islamist rebels, the 1998 unrest involved a former government commander, Colonel Mahmoud Khudoiberdiev, who had fallen out with the regime.

Like Khudoiberdiev, the three convicted men came from parts of southwest Tajikistan that have a substantial Uzbek minority.

Saidjabbor Aliev, the defence lawyer for one of the men, Shavkat Joraev, has launched an appeal against the 15-year sentence his client was given. He argues that the deadline for launching a prosecution has long passed, and that in any case his client was only part of the mutinous force for two weeks.

Relatives of the convicted men say lawyers were denied access to them for three days, in which time they suffered serious physical mistreatment.

Bahrom Shomirov, the prosecutor in Qurghonteppa, the southern town where the trial took place, says information about the men’s role in Khudoiberdiev’s rebellion emerged only recently, when they were named by other individuals detained in an ongoing investigation.

This audio programme, in Russian and Tajik, went out on national radio stations in Tajikistan, as part of IWPR project work funded by the Norwegian Ministry of Foreign Affairs.