HRW: Activist forcibly returned from Russia

The report states that in a joint statement dated 24 February 2019, Human Rights Watch, the Association of Central Asian Migrants, the Association for Human Rights in Central Asia and the Norwegian Helsinki Committee documented the arbitrary detention of Tajik opposition activist Sharofiddin Gadoev by Russian and Tajik officials in Moscow, and his forcible return to Tajikistan. According to the report, Gadoev, 33, a member of the opposition National Alliance and former deputy head of the banned Group 24, had refugee status in the Netherlands since 2015. The report says he flew from Amsterdam to Moscow on 13 February 2019 with a round-trip ticket for meetings with Russian Security Council officials, and that on 14 February Russian security officers stopped his car, forced him into another vehicle, beat him, bypassed passport control and placed him on Somon Air Flight 1223 to Dushanbe, where Tajik security officers continued to beat him and placed a sack over his head. It records that Tajikistan’s Interior Ministry announced on 15 February that he had “surrendered” voluntarily at the airport, and subsequently broadcast staged videos of him with relatives denouncing other opposition figures. The report notes that Gadoev’s colleagues released a pre-recorded video on 19 February in which he stated he would never return to Tajikistan voluntarily, and that he was charged with contraband possession (article 289(1)) and forgery (article 340) of the Tajik Criminal Code. It situates the case within a five-year government crackdown, including the March 2015 killing of Group 24 founder Umarali Kuvvatov in Istanbul.