DUSHANBE, July 13, Asia-plus — Over the first half-year of 2007, 6,623 crimes have been registered in Tajikistan, which is 6 percent more than in the same period of last year, Colonel Haidar Mahmadiyev, an official with the Ministry of Interior (MoI), said in an interview with Asia-plus.
According to him, of those 6,623 crimes, 4,564 have been committed over the report period, while 2,059 others are crimes that had been committed in the previous years. “Those 2,059 crimes also include latent crimes that were revealed in the course of police operations and investigation of concrete criminal cases,” the colonel said.
Mahmadiyev noted that 1,258 serious crimes had been registered over the first six months of 2007, while the number of serious crime in January-June 2006 was 1,131. “At the same time, the number of the most serious crimes such as killing, rape or crimes entailing serious bodily injury has decreased,” said the MoI official, “Thus, the number of killings has decreased from 82 to 51,the number of rapes has decreased from 28 to 26, and the number of crimes entailing serous bodily injury has decreased from 47 to 42.
He added that the number of crimes using firearms committed during the report period had decreased from 50 to 27. Compared to January-June 2006, there was a 15.6 percent reduction in the number of crimes committed in public places (the number of them decreased from 708 to 585), and there was a 15.1 percent reduction in the number of group crimes.
According to the MoI, the number of thefts has increased over the same six-month period from 1,820 to 2,167 (a 19.1 percent increase compared to January-June 2006), and the number of the fraud-related crimes has increased from 656 to 828 (a 26.2 percent increase).
Mahmadiyev noted that the rate of juvenile crimes evokes serious concern. “Over the report period, 395 juvenile crime have been registered in the Tajikistan,” he said.
The MoI official noted that according to statistics for 2006, Tajikistan has one of the lowest crime rate among the CIS states. “In 2006, the crime rate in Tajikistan was 162 crimes per 100,000 people,” said Mahmadiyev, “For example, in Russia the crime rate was 285 per 100,000 people, in Uzbekistan – some 300 crimes per 100,000 people, and in Kyrgyzstan – more than 500 crimes per 100,000 people.”
