RUSSIAN AUTHORITIES RELEASE TAJIK JOURNALIST

Russian officials, reacting to international pressure, rejected a request to extradite a Tajik opposition newspaper editor, and released him from custody on July 11. The same day, Dodojon Atovullo, editor-in-chief of Tajikistan's opposition emigré newspaper Charogi Ruz (The Light Of Day), boarded a plane for Germany, where he currently resides.

Russian authorities detained Atovullo on July 5 during a stopover in Moscow while he was traveling from Germany to Tashkent, Uzbekistan. Tajik authorities have charged Atovullo with libeling Tajik President Imomali Rahmonov, and with inciting "national, racial, or religious enmity."

Atovullo, as a journalist and editor, has repeatedly accused the Tajikistan government of corruption. Amnesty International suggested his detention might have been triggered by the publication of an article from January 31, 2001, in the Russian newspaper Nezavisimaya Gazeta entitled "Who Will Combat the New Woes? Why Don't Tajik Leaders File Tax Returns?" or by his having written, but not published, an article last month in which he accuses the mayor of Dushanbe, Mahmadsaid Ubaidulloev, of active involvement in narcotics trafficking.

Atovullo fled from Tajikistan to Russia in 1993 during the Tajik civil war, during which numerous opposition figures and journalists were murdered. In May 2001, he, his wife and two children left Moscow for Frankfurt, where he took up a yearlong fellowship with Reporters Without Borders and with a German advocacy group.

Numerous international groups, including Amnesty International, Human Rights Watch, and the Glasnost Defense Fund, appealed to Russian authorities to block the extradition. The German government also exerted pressure on Russia to release Atovullo.

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Posted July 11, 2001 © Eurasianet
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