DUSHANBE, February 13, 2014, Asia-Plus – Relatives of prison inmate Mahmadrahim Saidov are going to complain to the Prosecutor-General’s Office about the Social Democratic Party (SDP) leader Rahmatillo Zoyirov, who according to them spread false information on February 6 that Mahmadrahim Saidov had allegedly died of cold exposure while in disciplinary cell of the detention center of the State Committee for National Security (SCNS) in Dushanbe.
Saidov’s brother Safarali Saidov says that he and Saidov’s daughter Niloufar Saidova visited Mahmadrahim Saidov in the SCNS-run detention center.
“Mahmadrahim is alive and well and there are no traces of torture on him,” Safarali Saidov told Asia-Plus in an interview.
We will recall that SDP leader Rahmatillo Zoyirov told Asia-Plus on February 6 that an inmate of Dushanbe prison has died of exposure to cold while in disciplinary cell. “Mahmadrahim Saidov from Khatlon’s Hamadoni district was a 46-year-old inmate who died of exposure to cold,” Rahmatillo Zoyirov said, noting that he received that information from a reliable source.
Representative of Tajik Ombudsman’s Office, Husniddin Nidoyev, visited pretrial detention facility # 9/1 and penal colony # 3/1 in Dushanbe on the same day and said that no one prison inmate died of exposure to cold “as some media sources reported Thursday morning.”
“I also talked to Mahmadrahim Saidov, who allegedly died of exposure to cold while in disciplinary cell. I did not tell him that we have received information about his death to be honest. I just said that I came as representative of the Ombudsman’s Office to study prison conditions in connection with cold weather that has hit the country in recent days,” said Nidoyev. “According to him, the prison conditions are not so bad. Therefore, information that prison inmate died after exposure to cold does not correspond to the facts.”
