Alleged Coup Trial in Tajikistan: Prosecutors Seek Lengthy Sentences

A closed-door trial in Tajikistan is reportedly coming to a conclusion, with prosecutors asking for 20-30 year sentences for eight defendants presumably accused of a coup plot.

The authorities have made no official announcements regarding the details of the plot. But Saidjafar Usmonzoda, until May 2024 the leader of the Democratic Party, appears to be at the center of the case.

Usmonzoda, a member of parliament, was detained in June. Soon after, in the course of requesting that parliament revoke Usmonzoda’s immunity, Prosecutor-General Yusuf Rahmon (no relation to President Emomali Rahmon) announced that a criminal case had been opened against Usmonzoda under Article 306, “Seizure of power with the use of violence.”

According to reporting by both Asia-Plus and RFE/RL’s Tajik Service, Radio Ozodi, on January 8, the Tajik government requested long prison terms for the defendants, who face a variety of charges including treason, seizure of power, fraud, and incitement.

For Usmonzoda and Hamrohkhon Zarifi, prosecutors are reportedly seeking 30-year prison terms. Zarifi served as Tajikistan’s foreign minister from 2006 to 2013 and was Tajikistan’s ambassador to Japan from 2015 until 2018, when he retired. 

The two Tajik outlets reported slightly different sentence requests for Shakirjon Hakimov, a lawyer and first deputy chairman of the Social Democratic Party of Tajikistan, either 20 years (Asia-Plus) or 24 (Ozodi).

Prosecutors reportedly asked for 23-year sentences for Akbarshoh Iskandarov, Abdulfaiz Atoi, and Ahmadshoh Komilzoda. 

Iskandarov was once – for less than two months in 1992 – acting president of Tajikistan and more recently had worked at the Tajik Academy of Sciences following positions as ambassador to Turkmenistan and Kazakhstan. 

Atoi was formerly a foreign ministry press secretary and did stints as consul in Kunduz, Afghanistan. 

Komilzoda, a former journalist with VOA until 2011, had been Usmonzoda’s deputy in the Democratic Party.

Ozodi also reported that prosecutors were seeking 26-year sentences for two retired colonels from the State Committee for National Security, Nuramin Ganizoda and Jamshed Boev.

With no details available officially, and only limited details available via local media, there’s not much that can be said about the case. And that’s precisely the point.

Writing about the case in December, I noted:

The eight men, most of them in their 60s and 70s, are on trial together… From the outside, however, the case seems strange. To varying degrees, all of the accused spent their lives serving the Tajik state, which has been dominated by President Rahmon and his family since 1992.

The Democratic Party [Usmonzoda] led for more than a decade was often referred to as a “pocket” party, a kind of nominal opposition within a system that did not brook genuine opposition. It seems complete madness for men with such intimate knowledge of the Tajik state to try and orchestrate a coup.