DUSHANBE, June 15, 2012, Asia-Plus — Tajikistan’ upper house (Majlisi Milli) of parliament has given consent to instituting criminal proceedings against Nour Nourov, judge from the Supreme Court.
Such a decision was made by the session of the Majlisi Milli that took place in Dushanbe on June 14 following the request from the Prosecutor-General’s Office.
Earlier, Radio Liberty’s Tajik Service reported that Supreme Court Judge Nour Nourov had been summoned to the Agency for State Financial Control and Combating Corruption as witness in the so called “Isfara Case.”
We will recall that the Isfara Case concluded in June 2009 with 29 people receiving sentences of 10 to 25 years, while a prosecutor in the trial asked for shorter terms for them. All defendants were tried as members of an organized crime group and so even those implicated in financial crimes were tried in tandem with those accused of murder, and sentenced accordingly. They were sentenced as associates of Tajik tycoon Nizomkhon Jourayev.
Judge Nour Nourov also participated in that trial.
The case was broadly covered in Tajik media. In January 2010, lawyer Solehjon Jourayev released an open statement addressed to the president, chief prosecutor, the parliament and other government bodies, accusing the Supreme Court leadership of arbitrary decisions. The lawyer cited three criminal cases, including the case of a group of businessmen from the northern city of Isfara, as an example. Solehjon Jourayev also attached an audio cassette containing his conversation with Judge Nour Nourov to the statement. During this conversation, Nourov reportedly said that he had passed unfair sentence on that case by order of his leadership.
On January 29, 2010, Nour Nourov and Ulughbek Mahmadshoev, judges from the Supreme Court of Tajikistan, and Fakhriddin Dodometov, judge from the Dushanbe city court, filed lawsuits against lawyer Solehjon Jourayev and the Dushanbe independent weeklies –
Asia-Plus
,
Farazh
and
Ozodagon
. The judge asked for totaling 5.5 million somoni in damages after an open statement by lawyer Jourayev published in the weeklies’ editions on January 19 (
Farazh
and
Ozodagon
) and January 20 (
Asia-Plus
) allegedly insulted their honor and dignity. The judges also asked to suspend activity of the mentioned media in legal form in accordance with Articles 142 and 143 of Tajikistan’s Code of Civil Procedure.
Investigation into the Isfara Case has reportedly been resumed after return of Nizomkhon Jourayev from Moscow. Nizomkhon Jourayev fled to Moscow but was arrested there in 2010 on a Tajik warrant. Earlier this year he resurfaced in Tajikistan under unexplained circumstances and told state media that he had come back to face justice at home.
