Two senior security officials imprisoned, dozens of personalities forced to resign. Accused of opaque relationships with businessmen and mafia clans. One of them is known to have tortured a blogger critical of President Mirziyoyev.
Tashkent () – Two senior officials have been detained in Uzbekistan, the first deputy director of the Guvd services in the city of Tashkent, Doniyor Taškhodžaev, and the former head of the president’s security administration, Šukrat Rasulov. In addition, dozens of other personalities were arrested or forced to resign. They are accused of very serious crimes related to other sensational cases, such as that of the well-known blogger Abdukodir Muminov, 34, one of the most outspoken critics of President Šavkat Mirziyoyev’s policies.
Muminov’s YouTube channel, titled Ko’zgu, had 247,000 followers and was dedicated to anti-presidential controversy. On December 23, 2022, the blogger was attacked by unknown individuals, who beat him to death. Two months later he was arrested, accused of fraud and embezzlement, and sentenced to seven years in prison in August 2023. His colleagues and supporters, such as the other blogger Asliddin Kamol, had linked the attack and arrest to their journalistic investigations, focused on the quite shady dealings of the president’s relatives. Abdukodir’s mother, Sabokhat Abdullaeva, said that in prison they tried to force her son to sign pre-prepared confessions, but he refused.
According to Abdullaeva’s account, one of the main investigators who pressured Muminov was Doniyor Taškhodžaev, who forced him to crawl on the ground by kicking him in the ribs. As a result of the torture, he lost consciousness several times, but was resuscitated and subjected to more violence. Taškhodžaev is now accused of covering up the misdeeds of a businessman, Džavlon Junusov, whom investigators believe is responsible for the attempted murder of former presidential administration aide Komil Allamžonov on October 26 in the Tashkent region.
Junusov would have obtained through bribery and violence the properties of several businessmen in the Uzbek capital, and Taškhodžaev would have covered up his crimes, for which he ended up being arrested on December 3, according to local media sources, a week after resigning from his position. He had held several high-level positions during his career, thanks to his good relations with Otabek Umarov, younger brother-in-law of President Mirziyoyev. He himself led the recent operation against street gangs, called “The 40 Days of Redemption”, which put one of the local underworld leaders, Salim Abduvaliev, behind bars.
Apparently, the actions undertaken by Tashkhodžaev were aimed at favoring another criminal organization, that of Ravšan Mukhiddinov, known as “Ravšan the Golden Man”, nephew of one of the historical bosses of the Tashkent mafia, Gafur Rakhimov, who had prospered under the regime of Uzbekistan’s first president, Islam Karimov, and then spent periods of “facilitated residence” in prisons in Dubai and Istanbul. With the rise to power of Mirziyoyev, the “golden” had returned to his homeland, free of all charges.
Another excellent arrest in recent days was that of Šukrat Rasulov, considered Umarov’s “right-hand man” and the practical organizer of the attack against Allamžonov. The fate of the detainees, and of all those who have been forced to abandon their posts, is the subject of media investigations, given the absence of official statements. From the few documents that have reached the press, it is known that there is a “decisive action plan” containing information about mutual threats by officials from various branches of the Uzbek secret services and security forces against journalists and leakers, to which waits for the “mafia war” to end in the various palaces of power in Tashkent.
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