Uznews, Tashkent, 24 Feb 2009 – The department for combating and tax and currency violations of Uzbek Prosecutor-General’s Office detained independent journalist and human rights activist Dilmurod Sayid on suspicion of extortion in Tashkent on 22 February.
The Ezgulik human rights society said that Sayid had been detained for suspicion of extorting money from a resident of Samarkand where he had been taken by Prosecutor-General’s Office officials and was now being held at the detention centre of the Samarkand Region prosecutor’s office.
His detention is linked to the case of a certain Marguba Jurayeva who was detained in Samarkand when she was receiving $10,000.
At an interrogation she claimed that she had extorted this money on Sayid’s orders.
Ezgulik activists do not believe in his guilt. The head of Ezgulik’s Tashkent Region branch, Abdurahmon Tashanov, said that Sayid told him after his detention that he did not know any Marguba Jurayeva and it was the Samarkand Region administration’s revenge for his defence of the rights of farmers who faced land seizures in Samarkand Region.
Dilmurod Sayid has worked for a number of newspapers in Uzbekistan such as Advokat-Press, Darakchi and Kihslok Hayoti. After leaving these publications he started writing for independent publications and working with Ezgulik.
He has become the seventh journalist to face imprisonment in Uzbekistan which pushes the country to the bottom of table in terms of freedom of expression.
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