A Russian court has ordered the deportation of a prominent advocate for Tajik migrants who says he has never been a citizen of Tajikistan.
A lawyer for Karomat Sharipov told journalists that the Lyubertsy city court outside Moscow ruled on November 30 that the Federal Security Service (FSB) was right to confiscate Sharipov's Russian passport and that he must be deported to Tajikistan.
The lawyer, Anna Pankina, said that her client -- who heads the Migrants Federation -- was detained in the courtroom following the ruling.
Sharipov said in October that the FSB had confiscated his passport after claiming it was illegally obtained.
Sharipov contends that he obtained Russian citizenship legally in 1993, after serving in the Soviet and later the Russian Army. He says he never had Tajik citizenship after the Soviet Union broke apart in 1991.
According to Sharipov, the FSB confiscated his passport after a brawl between Tajik migrant workers and security personnel at a Moscow mall in late September.
Some 250 people, mainly Tajik migrant workers, were detained. Sharipov voiced concerns over legality of such detentions.
There are hundreds of thousands of labor migrants from Central Asia and the Caucasus living and working in Russia.
