Rustam Saydakhmadzoda and the Sad State of Justice in Tajikistan

In late May 2021, a judge in Tajikistan’s Sughd region issued an acquittal in a fraud case, citing a lack of evidence of a crime. In November 2022 the judge went on trial himself, charged with knowingly false denunciation of a crime, illegal sentencing, abuse of authority, and fraud. In March 2023, state prosecutors asked the judge to be sentenced to nine years in prison and in early April the trial concluded.

How Rustam Saydakhmadzoda, formerly a judge in the Bobojon court in Sughd’s Gafurov district, went from judicial bench to jail cell is a stark illustration of Tajikistan’s deeply damaged justice system. 

Saydakhmadzoda’s 2021 acquittal ruling was an unexpected and momentous decision, meriting press coverage. Indeed, any acquittal is a news story in Tajikistan. According to RFE/RL’s Tajik Service, Radio Ozodi, in February 2020 the head of Tajikistan’s Supreme Court said that only 10 people had been acquitted in the previous year, out of around 11,000 criminal cases considered annually by the country’s courts. In 2021, there were only two acquitals and in the first half of 2022 there wasn’t a single acquittal out of more than 5,000 criminal cases. 

In essence, if you are accused of a crime in Tajikistan, you are presumed guilty. 

Saydakhmadzoda acquitted a man named Afzal Majidi, a 32-year old resident of Khujand, who had been accused of fraud by the transport prosecutor’s office. The alleged crime involved Majidi requesting that an employee of the Air Communications Agency, which sells airline tickets for Tajik Air, change the departure date of his ticket. The agent instead issued him a new ticket and demanded that he pay the full price. Majidi called it strange that he was charged with a criminal offense – fraud, which carries a two to five year prison sentence – instead of the case being pursued in civil court. 

If all of this seems like a thin explanation of a crime, it is: There isn’t much more reporting on Majidi’s charges and in throwing out the case Saydakhmadzoda determined that there was “a lack of corpus delicti in his actions." 

“Corpus delicti” is Latin legal jargon for "body of the crime” – referencing the legal principle that a crime has to be proven to have occurred before someone can be convicted of committing it. 

The Majidi case is not Saydakhmadzoda’s only acquittal. In 2018, the judge acquitted a businessman of fraud after it was proven in court that the money he was accused of stealing from a partner had, in fact, been returned.

Soon after Saydakhmadzoda’s late May 2021 acquittal of Majidi, the transport prosecutor entered the judge’s office and rudely demanded a copy of the verdict, as Saydakhmadzoda explained in an appeal letter. Bobur Olimov, the transport prosecutor, later called Saydakhmadzoda recounting this incident “slander.” In early July, Tajikistan’s Supreme Court opened an administrative case against the judge on the grounds that, over a 17-month period from 2020 into 2021, five sentences handed down by Saydakhmadzoda had been “overturned” by higher courts. The judge contended that the cases in question had been returned for re-investigation and no decisions had been made.

A year later, in June 2022 Saydakhmadzoda was arrested and soon after he was dismissed. Judges are appointed by the president of Tajikistan, and in the decree dismissing Saydakhmadzoda, President Emomali Rahmon stated that the judge was being dismissed "for committing an act discrediting the honor and dignity of a judge."

The case, however, grew beyond accusations against the judge. Aziza Khaidarova, the judge’s 22-year-old secretary, was arrested also and accused of fraud in acquiring a house. Prosecutors slanderously alleged that Khaidarova was pregnant by the judge, too. Khaidarova’s mother suggested soon after her daughter’s arrest that she had been detained in an effort to pressure the young woman into testifying against the judge. The mother also said that the house in question was purchased with money the mother earned working in Russia, not by Aziza, and pushed back against the accusation that her daughter was pregnant.

As the summer of 2022 passed, the judge and his secretary had their pre-trial detention periods extended and Khaidarova’s case was moved from Dushanbe to remote Khujand. In November 2022 the judge’s trial began in Dushanbe. Journalists were not allowed to enter either court to cover the cases.

In January 2023, Khaidarova was convinced and sentenced to 10 years in prison on charges of fraud, embezzlement, and falsification of evidence. All references to a pregnancy evaporated, and the additional charges appear retaliatory, exceeding even those lobbed against Saydakhmadzoda.

In late March, Saydakhmadzoda’s trial concluded and prosecutors asked that the former judge be sentenced to nine years in prison. In his final remarks in court, Radio Ozodi (which was not allowed into the court but was informed by sources inside as to what had transpired) reported that the former judge asked, rhetorically, “Do you know why I am here?” and expounded that he was in the docket because he had returned unsubstantiated cases to prosecutors for further investigation and had issued not guilty verdicts in criminal cases “initiated against innocent people.”

As of writing, the final verdict in Saydakhmadzoda’s case has not been announced, but it’s all but inevitable that he will be convicted. Tajikistan’s judicial system is simply not independent; judges are not free to seriously consider the cases brought before them and instead are motivated to merely agree to convict those the authorities accuse of crimes. Saydakhmadzoda’s case stands as a testament to just how compromised the Tajik justice system is.