Watchdog

DUSHANBE -- The 28-year prison sentence of jailed Tajik lawyer Buzurgmehr Yorov has been shortened as part of a recent mass amnesty.

Ilhom Mahmudov, deputy chief of Tajikistan's Penitentiary Service, told RFE/RL on November 26 that according to the mass amnesty announced in October to mark the 25th anniversary of the Central Asian nation's constitution, Yorov's prison term had been cut by six years.

Officials at the Prosecutor-General's Office told RFE/RL that the amnesty had also allowed for a shortening of the 21-year prison term for another jailed lawyer, Nuriddin Mahkamov. He gave no further details.

The two lawyers were sentenced in October 2016 on charges of issuing public calls for the overthrow of the government and inciting social unrest.

Yorov's 23-year prison term was later extended by five years after a court in Dushanbe found him guilty of contempt of court and insulting a government official.

Yorov and Mahkamov have denied any wrongdoing, insisting that their trial was politically motivated because they defended members and leaders of the Islamic Renaissance Party of Tajikistan, a group that was banned in 2015 as a terrorist organization.

Western governments and human rights organizations have urged the Tajik government to release the two.

In September, Yorov was awarded the Faiziniso Vohidova Human Rights Prize for his contribution to the development of democratic institutions and civil rights in Tajikistan.

The award, established by the Association of Central Asian Migrants in Europe, was handed to Yorov's brother Jamshed Yorov in Warsaw at the Human Dimension Implementation Meeting of the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe.

Yorov was also shortlisted for the 2019 Vaclav Havel Human Rights Prize by the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe.

BISHKEK -- The chief of Kyrgyzstan's financial police says the amount of cash illegally funneled out of the country by suspects implicated in a joint investigation by RFE/RL's Kyrgyz Service, the OCCRP, and the Kyrgyz news site Kloop is close to $1 billion, well above the original estimate of $700 million.

Bakir Tairov told lawmakers on November 26 that the State Service For The Fight Against Economic Crimes had launched an investigation into what he called money laundering following the journalistic investigation that sparked a public outcry in the Central Asian country recently.

"In all, the amount of $932,736,000 was illegally transferred out of the country...The sums were transferred to China, Turkey, Lithuania, Britain, Germany, and other countries," Tairov said.

The joint investigation involving RFE/RL revealed that a 37-year-old Uyghur businessman from China's northwestern region of Xinjiang, Aierken Saimaiti, secretly provided reporters with documents demonstrating how hundreds of millions of dollars were moved out of Kyrgyzstan via a network led by Khabibula Abdukadyr, a Chinese-born Uyghur with a Kazakh passport.

Saimaiti was shot dead in Istanbul on November 10.

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Tairov said at the parliamentary session on November 26 that the Kyrgyz authorities had issued an arrest warrant for Saimaiti on suspicion of tax evasion in July.

Saimaiti alleged that the former deputy chief of the Kyrgyz Customs Service, Raiymbek Matraimov, was instrumental in providing cover for the Abdukadyr network's cargo empire in the region.

The investigation by RFE/RL's Kyrgyz Service, OCCRP, and Kloop also found that Matraimov's wife is a joint investor in a Dubai property development with a company controlled by Abdukadyr.

Matraimov and his brother, Kyrgyz lawmaker Iskender Matraimov, have denied accusations of wrongdoing by the former customs official.

Saimaiti told reporters prior to his death that in order to protect himself, he had applied for Turkish citizenship and expected to receive it on November 14. He said he planned to turn over more financial documents to reporters after that.

He was shot dead at a cafe in Istanbul. Turkish police have made several arrests in the case, though details of the suspects' motives and potential contacts remain murky. Turkish police have made no official statements on the case.

The Kyrgyz Prosecutor's Office said on November 22 that it had launched a probe to verify information revealed in the joint investigation, specifically that "unknown persons repeatedly threatened [Saimaiti] with murder, which forced him to flee to the Republic of Turkey."

The same day, the Kyrgyz president's spokeswoman, Tolgonai Stamalieva, said that Jeenbekov, before becoming president, met with Abdukadyr at "a general meeting held by [Jeenbekov's predecessor] Almazbek Atambaev," but never had any joint business projects with him.

The joint journalistic investigation uncovered video footage showing Abdukadyr sitting in the second row at Sooronbai Jeenbekov's inauguration in November 2017.