Civil Rights Defenders: Yorov decade wrongfully held

The report states that on 29 September 2025, Civil Rights Defenders published a joint statement (signed by 12 organisations including Amnesty International, CIVICUS, Freedom Now, Helsinki Foundation for Human Rights, Human Rights Watch, the International Bar Association’s Human Rights Institute, the International Commission of Jurists, International Partnership for Human Rights, Lawyers for Lawyers, Norwegian Helsinki Committee, and Araminta) stating that Tajikistan’s authorities have wrongfully imprisoned human rights lawyer Buzurgmehr Yorov for ten years. The report states Yorov, aged 54, is serving a 23-year prison sentence for his work representing political opposition leaders. The report states that in early September 2015, Yorov began representing members of the Islamic Renaissance Party of Tajikistan, and the party was banned and labelled a terrorist organisation in September 2015. The report states that on 28 September 2015, police arrested Yorov and raided his home and legal office without a warrant, charging him with forgery, fraud, “arousing national, racial, local or religious hostility,” and extremism. The report states the charges appeared to stem from an interview Yorov gave shortly before his arrest in which he announced that one of the people he represented had been tortured in pre-trial detention. The report states Yorov was held in pre-trial detention for eight months, beaten, and placed in solitary confinement, and sentenced on 6 October 2016 to 23 years in prison following a trial riddled with due process violations. The report states new trumped-up charges, most recently in July 2023, have extended his sentence to a release date of September 2043. The report states Yorov has been severely mistreated and tortured in prison, held incommunicado, and the UN Working Group on Arbitrary Detention issued an opinion in May 2019 calling for his immediate release.