310308_shurpayev

tajikistanweb.com

Tajikistan’s police have rejected Russia’ s informal request to extradite three suspects in the murder of a Russian TV reporter in Moscow detained in the Central Asian country. Citing the 1992 Minsk Convention that prohibits this kind of extraditions, sources in the Interior Ministry insisted that the Tajik side would carry out the investigation itself.

Ilyas Shurpayev, 32, a well-known reporter from Russia’s volatile republic of Daghestan in the North Caucasus was found strangled with a belt and stabbed in his burning Moscow apartment on March 21. The body was found by fire-fighters who had arrived to put out the fire in the apartment. Moscow police said the killers set the place on fire after taking away 100,000 roubles, about $4,100.

Earlier reports suggested that the killers could not have been burglars since they had not touched Shurpayev’s laptop computer and other valuable belongings. But latest reports confirm that Shurpayev’s mobile phone and watch were found in the house of the main suspect in the murder, Masrurjan Yatimov, 45 km west of Dushanbe. Two other suspects named as ‘the Muhammadiev brothers’ were arrested on Saturday morning in Vahdat district, 15 km east of the capital. The suspects are taken by police to a Dushanbe holding facility.

Tajik police were tipped off on the suspects’ whereabouts by Moscow criminal investigators who travelled to Tajikistan for the arrests.

Russian agencies have quoted a Tajik Interior Ministry representative as saying that Tajikistan’s Constitution does not allow the extraditions to take place, since all three suspects are Tajik nationals.

"The Russian law enforcement organs have repeatedly extradited important suspects like the ex-Minister of Interior Affairs of Tajikistan Yaqub Salimov and the former head of the "Tajikgaz" company Mahmadruzi Iskandarov to Dushanbe", recollects the Russian website Vesti.ru. "Both of them are imprisoned now."

This is the first time that Russian media admit the fact of Mahmadruzi Iskandarov’s rendition to Tajik authorities in 2005. The leader of the Democratic Party was sentenced to 23 years in prison afterwards. Russia had rejected its role in Iskandarov’s arrest and extradition.

However, there is an obvious difference between those cases of extradition and Russia’s wish to get three Tajik suspects extradited to Moscow. Both Salimov and Iskandarov were Tajik nationals wanted by the Tajik authorities, while the three suspects of the Shurpayev’s murder case are Tajik citizens detained in Tajikistan. According to law regulations, by no means Tajik nationals could be surrendered to a foreign country.

A day after Shurpayev’s murder unidentified gunmen killed the head of Daghestan’s state TV station. Russian officials said, they did not think the killings were linked. However, killing two prominent Daghestani media figures on two consecutive days does not seem completely coincidental either. Contract-style killings of journalists in Russia have become a bitter fact of life in post-2000 Russia. Most of the targets are those who try to dig into the Chechen question or allegations of corruption. Usually killers are not found.