DUSHANBE, April 6, 2016, Asia-Plus – An Uzbek national has been found guilty of spying for Tajikistan and sentenced to a 16-year jail term by an Uzbek military court.
Reuters
reports that a documentary broadcast on the Uzbek national television on Monday night said the man had been providing Tajik secret services with valuable information since the late 1990s, including the location of Uzbek military units in the south of the country.
The documentary did not specify when and where the sentence was handed down, but showed the convict, Sharifjon Asrorov, a middle-aged man, apparently confessing to the alleged crimes.
“Asrorov collaborated with Tajik secret services and passed information on the situation in Uzbek jails, dissident inmates, as well as military units and facilities of security and law enforcement bodies in the Surkhandaria, Qashqadaria and Bukhara regions,” the documentary said.
Asrorov was married to a woman from Tajikistan, according to the documentary titled “Traitor.”
Tajik authorities reportedly declined to comment on the case.
This is the latest in a string of accusations of spying traded between the two countries.
Uzbekistan and Tajikistan, which have tense relations over a number of issues including water and energy supplies, have both jailed dozens of people on mutual espionage charges over the past decade.
We will recall that the chief of Tajikistan”s Vostokredmet uranium-reprocessing plant, Shavkat Bobojonov, was arrested by Tajik security authorities on July 22, 2009 and accused of spying for Uzbekistan.
Uzbek national Furqat Tuighunov, who was arrested by the Uzbek National Security Service in July 2006, reportedly admitted to being hired by Tajik security authorities to conduct secret missions and assassinate “certain individuals” in Uzbekistan.
In June 2006, Uzbek authorities detained another alleged Tajik spy whom they said was planning assassinations and terrorist attacks in Uzbekistan.
Also in June 2006, Tajik courts found two Uzbeks guilty of espionage, sentencing each to 13 years in jail.
In 2004, an Uzbek military court reportedly sentenced five people — including two Tajik citizens — to lengthy prison terms on charges that included spying for the Tajik government. An unnamed court official was quoted as saying that a Tajik woman disguised as a prostitute had been sent to Uzbekistan to gather sensitive information about Uzbek military sites in the border area. The source suggested that an Uzbek military officer had been recruited from a nearby airbase along with an Uzbek woman who had allegedly received training in subversive activities at a special camp in Tajikistan.
These contretemps come against a backdrop of uneasy bilateral relations since independence from the Soviet Union in 1991. Dushanbe and Tashkent have long lists of mutual grievances.
Relations between Tajikistan and Uzbekistan have been strained because of the former’s plans to build the Roghun hydroelectric power plant (HPP). Tajik authorities believe that the Roghun dam is solution to many problems Tajikistan faces today, including frequent electricity shortages during winters.
The Roghun HPP could generate both enough electricity to provide for Tajikistan’s population and enough excess to export to Pakistan, Afghanistan, or China.
Uzbekistan is downstream country and its authorities consider that Tajikistan will use the dam as a means of leverage to pressure Uzbekistan in the many political disputes between the two countries.
However, tensions appeared to ease somewhat in the last few years. Tajik President Emomali Rahmon held talks with his Uzbek counterpart Islam Karimov in Dushanbe on September 10, 2014 on the sideline of the Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO) summit. Both presidents declared for expansion of friendly and good-neighborly relations between their countries.
It was the first visit of Uzbek president to Tajikistan since 2008. In August 2008, Islam Karimov visited Dushanbe to attend the SCO summit. Rahmon and Karimov also held talks in Tashkent in June 2010 on sideline of the SCO summit.
