IWPR: Tajik Opposition Figure 26 years

The report, published by the Institute for War & Peace Reporting (IWPR) at iwpr.net/global-voices/tajik-opposition-figure-gets-26-years, concerns the 26-year prison sentence handed down to Tajik opposition politician Zayd Saidov. Note: the PDF supplied in the library consists only of a Cloudflare security verification page, so the full text of the IWPR article could not be captured for this summary. Readers are referred to the publisher’s original URL for the complete text. Based on the URL and headline, the report concerns Saidov, a prominent businessman and former Tajik Minister of Industry, who announced in April 2013 the formation of the opposition New Tajikistan Party ahead of parliamentary elections. According to widely reported facts about the case at that time, Saidov was arrested on 19 May 2013 at Dushanbe airport on his return from France and charged under the Tajik Criminal Code with polygamy, illegal deprivation of liberty, rape, fraud and bribery. On 25 December 2013 a closed trial in Dushanbe resulted in his conviction on all five counts and a 26-year prison sentence. The report falls within IWPR’s “Global Voices” series covering political persecution in Central Asia. Users should consult the live IWPR webpage for the authoritative text of this specific article.