Tajik opposition activist released from jail in Belarus

Shabnam Hudoydodova, activist of the Group 24 Tajik opposition movement, has been released from jail in Brest, after over eight months of imprisonment.

More details will be announced later.

Shabnam Hudoydodova was detained in June 2015, after Tajikistan requested the activist’s extradition from Belarus and put her on the Interpol wanted list.

Ms. Hudoydodova was put on the wanted list after the expulsion from Russia of Maksud Ibrahimov, the leader and founder of the organization “Youth of Tajikistan for the Revival of Tajikistan”, and one of the leaders of the opposition coalition “New Tajikistan”, which includes Group 24. On January 20, he disappeared in Moscow and it soon became known that he was in Tajikistan. His exact whereabouts are still unknown. In January 2015, Shabnam Hudoydodova’s house was searched, and secret services questioned her mother and all those with whom she maintained relations in Tajikistan.

In recent years, Shabnam Hudoydodova has lived in Russia. In social networks she has actively supported the critical opinions of the political opposition in Tajikistan, she emphasized the need for democratic reforms in her home country.