Tajik policeman jailed for 13 years in rare torture case

The officer was found guilty of torturing Komil Khodjanazarov, detained in 2017.

DUSHANBE, Tajikistan (AFP) - A policeman in Tajikistan has been jailed for 13 years for crimes including torture, an official in the Central Asian state said Thursday, a rare acknowledgement of use of violence in custody.

A court in northern city of Khujand issued the sentence to Shukhrat Shamsiddinov earlier this week in a closed-door trial, a court spokesman told AFP.

The officer was found guilty of torturing Komil Khodjanazarov, detained in 2017 on suspicion of participating in a banned organisation, and extorting money from him, he said.

Khodjanazarov later reportedly killed himself.

The prisoner claimed in a video clip he recorded following his detention that law enforcement officers released him after he paid them a bribe, according to a report by Radio Ozodi, the Tajik branch of Radio Free Europe.

The same report said that Khodjanazarov committed suicide after being summoned to the police for further interrogation.

"The trial took place earlier this week behind closed doors," the court spokesman told AFP by telephone.

Another police officer and an internal security official had been sentenced to 13 and 12 years respectively as part of the same criminal case last year, the spokesman added.

Khodjanazarov, 31, was arrested in 2017 along with more than a dozen other people suspected of being members of an Islamic political party banned by the government in 2015.

He maintained that he had left the party before the ban came into force.

Rights groups regularly cite concerns over torture in the ex-Soviet republic’s secretive detention facilities and penitentiary system.

In November last year security sources told AFP that at least 26 people including two prison guards were killed during a riot that broke out in a prison in Khujand.

Authorities have said they are investigating the violence but have still not revealed what caused it.