DUSHANBE, June 30, 2011, Asia-Plus — Colonel Rahmonqul Davlatov, chief of Dushanbe’s Sino-1 police station, has been appointed to head the internal security department within the Ministry of Interior (MoI), the Interior Ministry spokesman Mahmadullo Asadulloyev said.
Davlatov replaced Colonel Saydullo Pirov, who was found dead in the room at Tavhid Hotel in Khujand, the capital of Sughd province on February 5 this year. He died in unclear circumstances. The prosecutor-General’s Office has opened an investigation into the death of Saydullo Pirov under the provisions of Article 104 of Tajikistan’s Penal Code – murder. The investigation is under way.
Meanwhile, Rahmonqul Davlatov admitted in an interview with the newspaper “Asia Plus” that he personally ordered the detention of Safarali Sangov on March 1. Sangov died several days later from injuries sustained in what his relatives say was a severe beating at the Sino-1 police station.
We will recall that Safarali Sangov, 37, died on March 5 in the National Medical Center in Dushanbe several days after he was beaten and taken from his house by plainclothes officers.
His wife, Sarvinoz Hikmatova, said that on March 1, a group of men in civilian clothes, who were evidently from a police station in Dushanbe”s Sino district, entered their house, beat her husband, and took him away. She found him later in a coma in the resuscitation department of the National Medical Center.
Sangov”s relatives say several police participated in his arrest on March 1, suggesting that more than two police officers may have been involved in the beating that led to his death.
The trial of two former police officers from Sino-1 police station charged over the death of Sangov – Abdurahmon Yoqubov and Qodir Hasanov – opened on June 2 but was immediately adjourned. The trial resumed on June 6.
Police say Sangov committed suicide by jumping from a second-story set of stairs and, when he was then returned to an interrogation room, by repeatedly banging his head against a wall.
Prosecutor Zayniddin Jourayev announced on June 6 that the defendants have been officially charged with negligence that led to Sangov”s suicide.
That statement profoundly upset Sangov”s relatives, who were present in the courtroom. They insist that Sangov was severely beaten and that his death was not suicide, but murder.
In April, Minister of Interiors Abdurahim Qahhorov said in an interview with Asia-Plus that all those guilty of the death of Safarali Sangov would be punished. “Everybody will get his bitters, up to chief, because chief bears direct responsibility for his officers.”
