Two Tajik human rights lawyers – Buzurgmehr Yorov and Nouriddin Mahkamov – have got lengthy jail terms on charges of issuing public calls for the overthrow of the government and inciting social unrest.
The Dushanbe city court sentenced Buzurgmehr Yorov and Nouriddin Mahkamov to 23 and 21 years in prison respectively on October 6. They will serve their terms in a high-security penal colony.
The sentence followed their conviction on charges of inciting regional and religious enmity (Article 189 of Tajikistan’s Penal Code), public calls for the forcible overthrow of or change to the constitutional order in Tajikistan (Article 307), public calls for carrying out extremist activity (Article 307’), and fraud (Article 247). Buzurgmehr Yorov was also charged with document forgery (Article 340).
The lawyers are barred from practice for five years.
The court's ruling was nearly identical to the prosecution's earlier demand for a 25-year prison term for Buzurgmehr Yorov and a 21-year prison term for Nouriddin Mahkamov.
Yorov and Mahkamov pleaded not guilty and called their trial politically motivated.
Buzurgmehr Yorov, who is the head of the law firm Sipar, was arrested on September 29, 2015 and Nouriddin Mahkamov, who is also from the Sipar law firm, was arrested in late October 2015.
At the time of his arrest, Yorov had just begun to represent 13 members of the Islamic Revival Party of Tajikistan (IRPT), whom authorities arrested on various charges on September 16. In an interview with a journalist published the day he was arrested, Yorov said that one client, Umarali Hisaynov, a deputy party leader, told him that officers from the Police Unit for Combating Organized Crime had beaten him following his arrest.
The attorneys’ case moved to a court on April 5 and it has been classified as “secret.” The trial began on May 5.
International human rights groups say Yorov was arrested in retaliation for representing 13 members of the opposition Islamic Revival Party of Tajikistan. The government banned the party in August last year and declared it a terrorist organization on September 29, 2015.
In a statement released on October 7, 2015, six international human rights groups urged the Tajik authorities to release or present credible and internationally recognizable charges against Buzurgmehr Yorov and Nouriddin Mahkamov.
Meanwhile, Buzurgmehr Yorov’s brother, Jamshed Yorov, who was representing the IRPT deputy leader Mahmadali Hayit in the trial, was arrested on August 22, 2016 and charged with “divulging state secrets.” On August 26, a court in Dushanbe’s Firdavsi district ordered his remand in pretrial detention. If convicted he could face up to 10 years in prison.
