Tajik president vows to punish perpetrators of attack on police

Tajikistan’s President Emomali Rahmon says the recent deadly attacks against police forces in his country stemmed from “criminal plans,” saying that perpetrators will receive due punishment.

During a Sunday address at the provincial town of Vahdat after a couple of shootouts allegedly arranged by a rogue ex-deputy defense minister, Rahmon said that those behind the deadly assaults would be “deservedly punished.”

“This was carried out by criminals… who had criminal plans,” said the Tajik head of state. “I want to offer my condolences to the families of the dead police and Special Forces, and declare that the guilty will be deservedly punished.”

According to an Interior Ministry statement, nine police officers and 13 suspected militants were killed during armed clashes with police early Friday morning in the country’s capital of Dushanbe and its suburban city of Vahdat.

The ministry further said that nearly 500 weapons were seized and 32 militants taken into custody following the Friday armed clashes, including at least six current members of the government’s Defense Ministry.

It said the situation in the capital and Vahdat, merely 10 kilometers east of Dushanbe, was “stable” and under the control of state security forces.

This is while at least four other militants were killed in new clashes with government forces on Friday.

"Government forces of Tajikistan killed four members of a terrorist group during an operation in the Ramit Valley," an interior ministry spokesperson said about the military operation under way roughly 50 kilometers northeast from the country's capital, Dushanbe.

"There have been no losses or injuries among pro-government forces," the spokesperson said.

An air and ground military operation was launched by government forces, targeting militants that it claims are commanded by Abdulhalim Nazarzoda, the country’s former deputy defense minister who was dismissed on Friday “in connection with a crime committed.”

The authorities, however, did not disclose the nature of Nazarzoda’s crime but said that he remains at large.

Officials further disclosed that the assailants also managed to seize “a large quantity of weapons and ammunition” during their armed attacks on state security forces.

Meanwhile, Dushanbe claims that Nazarzoda, who fought on the side of opposition forces during a five-year civil war that left nearly 150,000 people dead in the 1990s is a member of the Islamic Renaissance Party of Tajikistan (IRPT), which is the country’s largest opposition group and which was effectively shut down last week by government authorities.

IRPT, however, has denied that Nazarzoda is a member of the party.

Nazarzoda was appointed deputy defense minister in January after serving there since 1999, when anti-government forces were integrated into government bodies following the civil war.

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