Employees of another media outlet have been arrested in Uzbekistan on charges of defamation, extortion, and other crimes. The Khorezm province police department reported the arrest in Urgench of the director of Qonun Doirasida (Within the Law) project, 45-year-old lawyer Furkat Ruzmetov, and an employee, 33-year-old lawyer Azamat Avezov.
Reportedly, the Investigative Department of the Urgench city police department is conducting a preliminary investigation into allegations made by several individuals.
The detainees are now facing seven articles of the Criminal Code of Uzbekistan, namely:
- Defamation, combined with an accusation of committing a serious or especially serious crime, for mercenary or other base motives);
- Extortion committed on an especially large scale by or in the interests of an organized group);
- Fraud committed on a large scale through abuse of official position);
- Intentional damage, destruction, or devastation of crops, forests, trees, or other plants, causing major losses);
- Production, forgery of documents, stamps, seals, and forms, their sale, or use by prior conspiracy by a group of persons; use of a knowingly forged document);
- Arbitrariness);
- Dissemination of false information.
Other individuals have also been involved in the criminal case; their names and number have not been disclosed.
Earlier, five individuals associated with the Taftish.uz news publication were arrested on January 16. Gayrat Aberaev, Azizjon Yuldashev, Sardor Khamidov, Marjona Eshkuvvatova, and Dilshod Nishonov are accused of extortion, fraud, slander, and dissemination of false information.
On January 20, a court in Margilan sentenced Elyor Tojiboev, a journalist for Anti-Corruption publication to four years in a maximum-security prison colony on charges of slander, insult, extortion, resisting a government official, appropriation, destruction, damage, or concealment of documents, and dissemination of false information.
