Alex Sodiqov, born as Alexander Sodiqov (; Russian: Александр Cодиков; born September 7, 1983) is a political science PhD student at the University of Toronto, who was apprehended by security officials in Tajikistan on June 16, 2014 and charged with treason and espionage.
Overview
Sodiqov was born in the town of Panjakent, in northern Tajikistan within the Soviet Union. He graduated from the Russian-Tajik Slavonic University with a degree in international relations and received a master's degree in conflict, development and security from the University of Leeds in 2008. Sodiqov worked for the National Democratic Institute (NDI), Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe (OSCE) and UNICEF, and lectured at the Russian-Tajik Slavonic University in Dushanbe, Tajikistan. He also blogged at Tajikistan Monitor and served as Central Asia Editor at Global Voices Online. In 2011, Sodiqov was admitted to the PhD program in political science at the University of Toronto, Canada.
Arrest and charges
He returned to Tajikistan with his wife and daughter in June 2014 to work on a research project funded by the UK Economic and Social Research Council. Under this project, Sodiqov had a contract with the University of Exeter. The project was investigating "the failure of Western approaches to conflict management" in former Soviet republics.
On June 15, Sodiqov traveled to Khorog, the capital of the Gorno-Badakhshan Autonomous Province in eastern Tajikistan, to interview a number of civil society representatives. There had been an outbreak of violence in Khorog in 2012, that was the subject of the study Sodiqov worked on. On June 16, he was apprehended by security officials during an interview with Alim Sherzamonov, the head of the local branch of the Social-Democratic Party of Tajikistan (SDPT), in Khorog. The next day he was transported to the State Committee for National Security (SCNS) office in Dushanbe.
On June 17, 2014, the SCNS issued a statement, claiming that Sodiqov had been detained for collecting information that "undermined national security". The SCNS alleged that Sodiqov was working for an unnamed "foreign intelligence service". Within the next several days, Sodiqov appeared at least twice on national television. The heavily edited video aimed at discrediting both him and the opposition politician he had been meeting at the time of his apprehension.
Following Sodiqov's detention, the project he had been working on, the University of Exeter, University of Toronto, and UK Economic and Social Research Council made statements confirming that Sodiqov was a scholar under a research contract with the University of Exeter, rather than a spy. They also confirmed that the purpose of Sodiqov's trip to Khorog had been purely academic.
Despite these reassurances, the SCNS formally charged Sodiqov under Article 305 of Tajikistan's Criminal Code ("High Treason"), which carries a prison sentence of between 12 and 20 years. He was placed in the SCNS pre-trial detention centre on 19 June 2014 and his case was classified as "top secret".
International pressure
Sodiqov's arrest on espionage and treason charges generated international outcry, with many rights groups and watchdogs calling for information, fair treatment and his release. Within days after the scholar was detained, the British ambassador to Tajikistan, the European Union delegation to the country, and the OSCE Representative on Freedom of the Media expressed concern about the detention of the scholar and the charges laid against him. Freedom House demanded immediate information about where and why the scholar was held by the authorities. Human Rights Watch called on Tajikistan to present credible evidence against the scholar or release him immediately. Amnesty International called Sodiqov a "prisoner of conscience" and claimed that charges laid against him were "politically motivated". Reporters Without Borders called for Sodiqov's immediate release, describing charges laid against him as "absurd". The Canadian Journalists for Free Expression (CJFE), PEN International, and a coalition of over 60 human rights NGOs from across the OSCE region also condemned Sodiqov's arrest and demanded that Tajikistan release him.