Prosecutors in the case of the abduction and murder of Tajikistan's top banker Shohrat Ismatulloev have asked the Supreme Court of the Central Asian nation to convict and sentence four of 14 defendants to life in prison.
Sources close to the court and law enforcement structures told RFE/RL on March 12 that the four defendants include a former senior police officer, Dilshod Saidmurodov, who is accused of masterminding and organizing the abduction.
The prosecutors also identified one defendant possibly facing the death penalty as Qamarruzamon Azizov, while the others remain unknown.
According to the sources, the prosecutors asked the court to sentence the other 10 defendants to prison terms of between three and 14 years.
An employee of the Supreme Court told RFE/RL on condition of anonymity that the closing arguments have been made and the verdicts and sentences for the defendants will be handed down in the coming days.
No further details of the trial, which started in January, are available as it is being held behind closed doors inside a detention center in Dushanbe.
Last month, Tajik Prosecutor-General Yusuf Rahmon said two others suspected of involvement in Ismatulloev's abduction and murder are still at large and two more suspects were dead. Rustam Ashurov fled to Moldova in June last year where he was fatally wounded after he resisted Moldovan police at the Chisinau airport, and Parviz Mustafokulov died in pretrial detention.
Moldovan authorities said at the time that Ashurov worked at the Tajik Interior Ministry for seven years but was fired for unspecified criminal activities.
Shohrat Ismatulloev, the deputy chairman of Orienbank, one of Tajikistan’s leading banks, was abducted in June last year. His body was found later in August.
Investigators say the abductors wanted to extort cash from the banker. According to the investigators, the abductors severely tortured Ismatulloev before killing him.
Orienbank is the largest private financial institution in the authoritarian Central Asian country and has been linked to the family of President Emomali Rahmon, several sources told RFE/RL.