The editor-in-chief of Paik, the only independent publication in Tajikistan’s southwestern Khatlon region, has been sentenced to 10 years in prison, Radio Ozodi reported on January 10.
Relatives described the sentence handed down by Kulob City Court to Ahmadi Ibrahim, 63, as “cruel”. It came after nearly six months of detention. Jeanne Cavelier, head of the Central Asia and Eastern Europe programme at rights watchdog Reporters Without Borders, has referred to the charges brought against the journalist as “trumped-up” and “fabricated”.
Ibrahim was charged with bribing an administrator of the State Committee for National Security, extortion and extremism.
In a December letter sent to Rustam Emomali—the Speaker of the National Assembly who is also the mayor of Dushanbe and eldest son of President Emomali Rahmon—Ibrahim said that he had no lawyer and that the authorities were using intimate family photos and personal correspondence against him.
"I have never bribed anyone in my life, but I am accused of bribery. I have not extorted money in my life, but I am accused of extortion. I have not been an extremist in my life, I have been fighting extremism for the past 22 years. How can I, a journalist and author of six novels about Zoroastrians, be a Salafi [Muslim]?" he wrote.
Since the arrest of Ibrahim, Paik has not been published.
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