Tajikistan - April 2023

A former judge from Sughd Province went on trial in Dushanbe on 3 April on a variety of charges tied to his perceived leniency and judicial independence and faces nine years. Rustam Saidahmadzoda has been detained since June 2022, and no further information has come to light from his closed-doors trial. Saidahmadzoda’s decisions to acquit the accused on lack of evidence were noteworthy in Tajikistan, where only a handful of cases out of thousands annually result in acquittals – two in 2020, 11 in 2021, and none in 2022. Corruption is systemic in the Tajik judicial system and anti-corruption prosecutions fairly common, although the opacity of proceedings leaves unclear which judges are being targeted for corruption and which for resisting pressure from the executive.

Sources: Bomdod, Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty