The Prosecutor-General’s Office of the Russian Federation has applied to the Supreme Court of the Russian Federation asking to designate the Islamic Renaissance Party of Tajikistan (IRPT) as a terrorist organization.
Visiting Russia’s chief prosecutor Igor Krasnov noted this here yesterday during a meeting with Tajik President Emomali Rahmon.
Krasnov, in particular said during the meeting with Rahmon that the Prosecutor-General’s Office of Russia had considered the request from the Prosecutor-General’s Office of Tajikistan to designate the IRPT as a terrorist organization.
“We have already sent a corresponding lawsuit against the IRPT to a court,” Russian chief prosecutor noted during the meeting with President Rahmon.
The Tajik president’s official website says Rahmon and Krasnov discussed issues of addressing internal threats, including those related to the tendencies of imposing the ideology of religious radicalism on society as well as sleeper cells of international terrorist and extremism organizations.
The Tajik president’s official website did not mention the IRPT in its report about the meeting of President Emomali Rahmon with Russian Prosecutor-General Igor Krasnov.
Igor Krasnov arrived in Dushanbe to participate in a joint board meeting Prosecutor-General’s Offices of Tajikistan and Russia that is being held in Dushanbe today.
Founded in October 1990, the Islamic Revival Party of Tajikistan was the only Islamic party officially registered in former Soviet Central Asia. The IRPT was registered on December 4, 1991. It was banned by the Supreme Court in June 1993 and legalized in August 1999.
Since 1999, the party had reportedly been the second-largest party in Tajikistan after the ruling People’s Democratic Party of Tajikistan.
In the 2005 and 2010 parliamentary elections, the IRPT won two out of 63 seats in the parliament, but the party suffered a crushing defeat in Tajikistan’s March 2015 vote, failing to clear the 5-percent threshold needed to win parliament seats.
Tajikistan’s Supreme Court banned the Islamic Revival Party as terrorist group on September 29, 2015 on the basis of a suit filed by the Prosecutor-General’s Office. The Supreme Court ruled that the IRPT should be included on a blacklist of extremist and terrorist organizations. The verdict forces the closure of the IRPT’s official newspaper Najot and bans the distribution of any video, audio, or printed materials related to the party’s activities.
