Belarusian Authorities Should Immediately Release Tajik Activist and Journalist Farhod Odinaev

Civil Rights Defenders and several other human rights organisations urge Belarus to free Tajik journalist and activist Farhod Odinaev. He was detained by Belarusian migration authorities, under a Tajik extradition request, when he tried to cross the Belarus-Lithuania border on 25 September.

Farhod Odinaev was travelling through Belarus on his way to attend a human rights conference in Warsaw, Poland, organised by the Organisation for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE). Since he was detained, he has been held in the pretrial detention centre in Grodno, Belarus, pending possible extradition to Tajikistan. If he is forcibly returned from Belarus to Tajikistan, he risks torture and ill-treatment.

We urge the Belarusian authorities to not extradite or deport Farhod Odinaev, or otherwise facilitate his forced return to Tajikistan.

Read the statement in full here.

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