Tajik Supreme Court orders death penalty for accomplice of warlord

Jul 23, 2002

 DUSHANBE, Tajikistan - Tajikistan's Supreme Court has sentenced an aide to a prominent Islamic warlord to the death penalty for murder, rape and other grave crimes, as the government seeks to stem violence lingering from a civil war in the 1990s.

For the past two months, the Central Asian nation's highest court has been trying 82 followers of Rakhmon Sanginov, an opposition commander who went by the nom de guerre "Hitler" before he was killed in a massive police operation last summer.

 On Monday, Sanginov aide Rakhmatullo Tagoyev was sentenced to the death penalty and Negmatullo Davlatov was sentenced to 22 years in prison for numerous murders, rapes, other violence and membership in illegal armed groups, court officials announced Tuesday.

 Tagoyev, Davlatov and the other defendants were detained in last summer's police operation. The closed trials are being held in a special hall of Dushanbe's main jail to reduce the risk that any of the suspects could escape.

 After the 1991 breakup of the Soviet Union, Tajikistan descended into civil war between a hard-line secular government and the mostly Islamic opposition. A truce that ended the war gave the opposition jobs in the government and the military, but some warlords refuse to recognize the deal.

 Following the truce, Sanginov was appointed commander of a military unit, but was discharged in 1998 for repeated insubordination.