OCCRP: Kidnapping, Torture, and Freedom (Gadoev, 2019 Moscow)

The report, part of OCCRP’s “Tajikistan: Money by Marriage” investigation, recounts the February 2019 kidnapping of Tajik opposition activist Sharofiddin Gadoev from Moscow and his subsequent interrogation in Dushanbe. According to the report, Gadoev, a former businessman granted asylum in the Netherlands, travelled to Moscow in February 2019 for meetings with Russian officials arranged via Russian lawyer Nikolai Nikolaev. The report states that on 14 February, after leaving the Crowne Plaza Hotel with an intermediary called “Maxim”, Gadoev was transferred into a minivan surrounded by eight men who identified themselves as being from the Russian Interior Ministry. The report describes that he was handcuffed, his mouth taped, a plastic bag placed over his head, driven to an airport and forced onto a Somon Air business-class flight to Dushanbe; stewards allegedly helped restrain him after he called out that he had been kidnapped. On arrival, the report states he was taken to the basement of the Tajik Interior Ministry’s criminal investigation department, where Deputy Head Col. Bakhiyor Nazarov and First Deputy Minister Abdurakhmon Alamshozoda gave him three options: torture followed by death, at least 25 years in prison, or cooperation by publicly denouncing the banned Islamic Renaissance Party and praising President Rahmon. According to the report, he was beaten on the head, back, ribs and stomach. The report states he was forced to film staged videos, that his mother was also coerced, and that he was released on 28 February 2019 after intervention by the German and Dutch foreign ministries.