Abdumalik Salomov, a doctor at the Cardiovascular Surgery Center in Khujand (Sughd province), has been sentenced to prison over ties with Salafists.
The Khujand city court sentenced Abdumalik Salomov to 5 ½ years in prison. Two other persons, who together with him in the dock – Salomov’s classmate Ilhom Ghafforov and one of Salomov’s friends Saydullo Mirzoyev – have been sentenced to five years in prison each.
The sentenced followed their conviction on charges of participating in a banned political party or a banned public or religious association (Article 307 (3) of Tajikistan’s Penal Code). They will serve their terms in a high-security penal colony.
The trail began on November 20.
Recall, Abdumalik Salomov and six his friends were arrested on August 19 this year on suspicion of being members of the Salafi group.
Several days later four of them were released and criminal proceedings have been instituted against Salomov, Ghafforov and Mirzoyev.
Abdumalik Salomov does not admit to the charges brought against him and says that he has never been member of any religious organization.
Abdumalik Salomov, 41, began working with the Cardiovascular Surgery Center in Khujand in 1999 after graduating from the Tajik Medical University in Dushanbe. He worked at the Center until 2005. In 2005 he entered the post-graduate course at the Bakulev Scientific Center for Cardiovascular Surgery in Moscow. In 2008, Salomov defended his thesis for the Candidate of Sciences in Medicine. Until 2015, he worked at the Vishnevsky military hospital in Moscow.
In 2015, Abdumalik Salomov returned to Tajikistan and got a job at the Cardiovascular Surgery Center in Khujand.
Salomov’s relatives and colleagues hope that justice will prevail and Abdumalik Salomov will return to family and work
The Tajik authorities banned Salafism as an illegal group on January 8, 2009, saying the Salafi movement represents a potential threat to national security and the Supreme Court added Salafists to its list of religious groups prohibited from operating in the country.
The movement claims to follow a strict and pure form of Islam, but Tajik clerics say the Salafists’ radical stance is similar to that of the Taliban in Afghanistan.
Salafists do not recognize other branches of Islam, such as Shi’a and Sufism (a mystical trend in Islam). The movement is frequently referred to as Wahhabism, although Salafis reject this as derogatory.
The overwhelming majority of Tajiks are followers of Hanafia, a more liberal branch of Sunni Islam.
On December 8, 2014, the Supreme Court of Tajikistan formally labeled the banned Salafi group as an extremist organization. The ruling reportedly followed a request submitted to the court by the Prosecutor-General’s Office. The ruling means that the group’s website and printed materials are also banned.
