Tajreform: Biography of Sharofiddin Gadoev

The report, published on the Reforms and Development of Tajikistan (Tajreform) movement website, is a detailed biography of Tajik opposition politician Sharofiddin Gadoev, born 19 May 1985 in the Farkhor district of Khatlon region. According to the report, Gadoev holds a degree in international law from the National University of Tajikistan and worked as an entrepreneur alongside Umarali Kuvvatov from 2005-2012 in petroleum, pharmaceuticals, transport, construction, metallurgy and mining. The report states that their businesses were unlawfully seized by relatives of President Emomali Rahmon, prompting the creation in 2012 of opposition movement “Group 24” demanding Rahmon’s resignation. According to the report, Gadoev became Group 24 leader after Kuvvatov’s assassination in Istanbul in March 2015, and founded the “Reforms and Development of Tajikistan” movement in Amsterdam in March 2018. The report catalogues repression against him: Interpol Red Notices in 2014 (rejected by Spain) and 2018 (rejected by Poland after a Warsaw court found the charges fabricated); his father Mirzoali Gadoev’s severe beating by the National Security Committee on 2 October 2014, which the report states led to his death in 2016; forced divorces of three sisters; confiscation of relatives’ passports; and his February 2019 kidnapping in Moscow, two-week detention in Tajikistan and release on 2 March 2019 after international pressure. The report states the UN Working Group on Arbitrary Detention found the detention violated international law in January 2022, and that in May 2024 Russia’s Basmanny Court charged him in absentia with spreading “fake news” about the war in Ukraine.