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Caucasus/Russia/Central Asia
Tajik opposition leader jailed for 23 years
2005-10-06
DUSHANBE - The Tajik Supreme Court jailed a top opposition leader for 23 years on an array of charges on Wednesday, and his supporters said the aim was to stop a rival to President Imomali Rakhmonov before elections next year. The court found Democratic Party leader Makhmadrouzi Iskandarov guilty of eight crimes, including terrorism, banditry and illegal possession of arms, a court official told Reuters.
Oh, not that Democratic Party.
The Central Asian state’s opposition said the sentence would benefit veteran leader Rakhmonov, who turned 53 on Wednesday and will seek re-election in November after being in power since 1992.

Iskandarov, a 51-year-old former head of state gas firm Tajikgaz, had repeatedly said that he was ready to challenge Rakhmonov in the election “to liberate the Tajik nation”. “If it weren’t for his (Iskandarov’s) political ambitions, he would have not been handed this sentence and no trial would have happened in the first place,” Rakhmatillo Zoyirov, head of the liberal Social Democratic Party, told Reuters. “His political ambitions triggered an order from above to institute a criminal case against him,” added Zoyirov, a professional lawyer, calling the charges “spurious”.
That usually happens in dictatorships.
Iskandarov was arrested in Russia last December on the same charges at the request of Russian prosecutors, but he was released shortly afterwards. He was arrested by Tajik police in April upon his return to Tajikistan.

In July the United States criticised Tajikistan over Iskandarov’s arrest and said that during the trial he had been denied regular and unobserved access to his legal counsel and his family had been unable to meet him. Washington’s comments were part of an international chorus from human rights bodies and democracy watchdogs who have criticised the government for attacks on independent journalists and attempts to stifle the press.

In 2003 Rakhmonov oversaw a referendum on constitutional changes allowing him to seek two consecutive seven-year terms. Rakhmonov enjoys support from former master Russia whose troops sided with his secular government during a 1992-97 civil war with Islamic guerrillas which claimed more than 100,000 lives.
Posted by:Steve White

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