HRW: Yorov detained

Published by Human Rights Watch (Berlin) on 7 October 2015 as a joint statement by six international rights groups, this news release reports the 28 September 2015 arrest in Dushanbe of Tajik human rights lawyer Buzurgmehr Yorov on what the document describes as trumped-up fraud and document forgery charges (Articles 140 and 340 of the criminal code). The report states that an Internal Affairs Ministry spokesperson alleged the fraud occurred in July 2010 and involved US$4,000 received from a resident of Istaravshan. The article finds that at arrest Yorov had just begun representing 13 leaders of the Islamic Renaissance Party of Tajikistan (IRPT) arrested on 16 September 2015; the government banned the party in August and declared it a terrorist organisation on 29 September 2015. The document reports that one client, deputy party leader Umarali Hisaynov, told Yorov that officers from the Police Unit for Combating Organised Crime had beaten him. Co-signatory groups — Amnesty International, the Paris Bar, Association for Human Rights in Central Asia, HRW, International Partnership for Human Rights, and the Norwegian Helsinki Committee — called for his release. The report states that up to 78 IRPT members were in detention or arrest on 6 October 2015, and cites the January 2015 conviction of lawyer Shukhrat Kudratov, the March 2014 arrest of Fakhriddin Zokirov, and July 2015 death threats received by Khujand-based lawyer Fayzinisso Vohidova. Nadejda Atayeva, Hugh Williamson, and Bjorn Engesland are quoted.