Ahmad Ibrohim, chief editor of the independent weekly newspaper Payk, has been detained since August 2024 on multiple charges, including extremism and extortion.
Law enforcement officers in the southern city of Kulob arrested Ibrohim on August 12 on charges of bribing a state security services officer.
Local sources familiar with the case told Radio Ozodi, a local service of the U.S. Congress-funded broadcaster Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty, that Ibrohim’s arrest appeared to have been a setup. Authorities have refused to extend Payk’s license to operate since March, those sources said, and a state security services officer who had spent several months cultivating a relationship with Ibrohim told the journalist that he could help obtain a license for 2500 somoni (US$235). After Ibrohim handed over the money, he was arrested.
The only independent media outlet in Tajikistan’s southern Khatlon Province, Payk has previously complained of pressure from local authorities on its staff in retaliation for its critical reports.
On October 17, Radio Ozodi reported that Ibrohim’s trial was underway behind closed doors in a detention center in Kulob. Authorities had brought two new charges against Ibrohim, accusing him of extremism and extortion, and had classified the case as secret. Ibrohim denied the charges, the outlet reported.
According to Radio Ozodi, the extremism charge relates to several articles published between 2016 and 2018. Ibrohim rejected the allegation as “risible,” saying he had spent his life fighting against extremism and had been threatened by prominent Tajik members of the militant Islamic State group over his articles on the subject.
The same outlet reported that investigators had questioned around a hundred local officials who had made payments to Payk, including for newspaper subscriptions or to buy Ibrohim’s books, and that prosecutors were summoning around 20 of them to appear in court—alleging that Ibrohim had extorted them. One local official told Ozodi that he had been threatened to force him to appear in court, but that he did not plan to testify against Ibrohim.
Extremism and bribing a state officer are punishable by up to 10 years in prison, and repeated extortion by up to 12 years, according to Tajikistan’s criminal code.
Ibrohim is the eighth journalist arrested in Tajikistan since 2022. Seven journalists are serving prison sentences of seven to 20 years, many of them convicted on extremism charges and all of them tried behind closed doors, with local journalists telling CPJ that press freedom in Tajikistan was at its lowest point since the country’s civil war 30 years ago.
As of November 2024, Ibrohim’s trial remains ongoing and he is being held at Kulob Pretrial Detention Center, a source familiar with his case told CPJ on condition of anonymity, citing fear of reprisal. CPJ was unable to establish the journalist’s health status.