Relatives of the jailed members of the Islamic Renaissance Party of Tajikistan (IRPT) are pleading with the international community for support, saying they fear their loved ones will be killed in prison.
On Wednesday October 6, relatives of Mahmadali Hayit, Rahmatullo Rajab, Zubaidullo Roziq, Hikmatullo Saifullozoda and Saydumar Husaini sent a letter to the Red Cross, the OSCE, the UN, and diplomatic missions in Dushanbe pleading for international help.
The letter quoted by Radio Liberty’s Tajik Service, known locally as Radio Ozodi, says the men are being monitored by certain prisoners with the intention of attacking and harming them at the first opportunity.
The relatives say members of the IRPT are being held in the same cells as violent radicals, who pick fights with the aging politicians
It is to be noted that the families pleaded with international organizations and diplomatic missions days after a 70-year-old Hikmatullo Saifullozoda, a spokesman for the IRPT, was attacked in a prison hospital.
According to Radio Ozodi, Hikmatullo Saifullozoda was attacked in a prison hospital where he was recovering from heart surgery last month.
An unnamed prison official confirmed to Radio Ozodi that Saifullozoda had received a head injury and that his assailant had been placed in solitary confinement.
Saifullozoda's wife, Faroghat Sanginova, told Radio Ozodi that the attacker was not ill, so it is not clear how he accessed the prison hospital.
