Crossroads Asia | Diplomacy | Central Asia

Austria Says No to the Tajik Government

In Vienna, judges have now rejected four names from Dushanbe’s 18-person extradition dossier.

A criminal court in Vienna on August 5 refused Tajikistan’s request to extradite Shavkat Muhammad, a member of the banned National Alliance of Tajikistan, along with his 77-year-old mother, Sharofat Sharifova, and his brother Bilolidin Sharifov. Tajik authorities accuse the three of extremism; the family calls the prosecution political. 

No written ruling has been published, and the account of the hearing comes from opposition figures who were in the room.

This is the fourth refusal to come out of a single Tajik submission. In April, the Interior Ministry sent Austria’s Justice Ministry files on 18 members of exiled opposition organizations, a dossier Leila Nazgul Seiitbek examined for the Diplomat in June. On June 24, a Vienna court took up the case of Islamic Renaissance Party of Tajikistan (IRPT) member Firdavs Shukurov. The conduct Dushanbe cited in its own case materials was Shukurov holding an anti-Rahmon banner at an October 2021 demonstration in Vienna, partly documented in a YouTube video. The rally had been authorized and Shukurov held refugee status. Five days later the same court blocked the return of a 49-year-old woman wanted since 2018 for public calls to change the constitutional order.

Austria has not always drawn a firm line on these kinds of requests, and the difference appears to have been procedural. In March 2020 it removed Hizbullo Shovalizoda after rejecting his asylum claim, a migration decision rather than an extradition ruling. He was detained on arrival in Dushanbe and sentenced in June to 20 years for treason and participation in an extremist organization in a closed trial. An Austrian court later invalidated the removal, finding that the asylum decision had relied on outdated information about conditions in Tajikistan, and obliged Vienna to bring him back. He is still in prison.

Elsewhere in Europe, we see similar patterns in which there is a divide between extradition requests and migration violations, regardless of the reality on the other end in Tajikistan. 

On June 20, Germany deported Asadullo Boboev, 54, and his 19-year-old son to Dushanbe. Boboev was placed in pretrial detention on arrival. A court in Geldern had authorized their pre-removal detention on the basis of expired residence status and repeated failure to leave voluntarily. Boboev had separately been given until July 1 to satisfy........

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