Hans Thoolen on Human Rights Defenders and their awards

On 13 January Asia-plus reported that a court in Dushanbe, Tajikistan, sentenced Sukhrat Kudratov to nine years in a penal colony for bribery and fraud. Kudratov’s real crime, it appears, was defending opposition activist Zaid Saidov in 2013.  Last year, another one of Saidov’s lawyers, Fakhriddin Zokirov, was arrested on forgery charges. He was released after eight months on the promise he would no longer defend Saidov. Steve Swerdlow of Human Rights Watch called Kudratov’s jailing “a serious setback for the freedom of expression and the independent legal profession in Tajikistan.”

At the time of the arrest, Frontline Defenders called him “one of few lawyers in Tajikistan who defends opposition activists, victims of police torture, and those accused of ‘religious extremism“. Dushanbe-based Bureau for Human Rights and Rule of Law named Kudratov their human rights defender of the year in 2011.

Tajikistan Jails Prominent Human Rights Lawyer | EurasiaNet.org.

This entry was posted on January 13, 2015 at 18:33 and is filed under Front Line, HRW, human rights, Human Rights Defenders.

Tags: Asia-plus, detention, Eurasia.net, Fakhriddin Zokirov, Human Rights Defenders, human rights lawyers, judicial harassment, prison sentence, Sukhrat Kudratov, Tajikistan, Zaid Saidov