DUSHANBE, February 27, 2014, Asia-Plus – Safarali Saidov, the brother of prison inmate Mahmadrahim Saidov, has filed a lawsuit in a court in Dushanbe’s Ismoili Somoni district seeking 10,000 somoni in damages from the Social-Democratic Party (SDP) Rahmatillo Zoyirov for spread of false information about the death of his brother in prison.
“We were deeply shocked to hear of the death of Mahmadrahim. We heard that news from media and went from Hamadoni to Dushanbe on the same day despite the cold weather. Therefore, we demand 10,000 somoni for the moral injury,” Safarali Saidov told Asia-Plus in an interview.
SDP leader Rahmatillo Zoyirov says that he has not known that Saidov’s relatives filed the lawsuit against him.
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.”
Saidov’s brother Safarali Saidov said on February 14 he and Saidov’s daughter Niloufar Saidova visited Mahmadrahim Saidov in the detention center in Dushanbe. According to him, Mahmadrahim Saidov is alive and well and there are no traces of torture on him
