Last week, blogger and civil activist Zhumasapar Dadebayev was forcibly expelled from Turkey to Uzbekistan, the Turkmen Helsinki Foundation for Human Rights reports , citing lawyer Abdulhalim Yilmaz .
Dadebaev is an ethnic Turkmen from Karakalpakstan. In the last two years, he actively participated in the Turkmen and Karakalpak democratic movements. Uzbekistan put him on the wanted list through Interpol, accusing him of “terrorism”. In October 2020, the police detained Dadebaev in Istanbul during preventive measures to prevent a rally of Turkmen activists. He was released from the deportation center by court order six months later.
On December 17, 2021, when the activist left the office of the Oguz Culture, Cooperation and Education organization in the Kadikoy district of Istanbul, he noticed surveillance by unknown persons, whom he later called “agents of the Uzbek special services” in a conversation with acquaintances. The police arrived at his call, a statement about the incident was registered by the prosecutor’s office on December 20. On the same day, the Turkish authorities accepted his asylum application, which has not yet been processed.
Dadebaev’s acquaintances in Istanbul reported that he stopped communicating on January 11. His phone has been switched off since then, and his personal pages on social networks have not been updated.
Lawyer Yilmaz said that the activist was expelled from Turkey on January 12. Also, according to him, earlier the Turkish court banned the deportation of Dadebaev to Uzbekistan, and this decision is still in effect.
Zhumasapar’s acquaintances and friends are convinced that there can be no question of a voluntary return. Most likely, an illegal operation was carried out with the participation of the Uzbek special services, which became noticeably more active after the recent events in Kazakhstan.
Representatives of the Karakalpak opposition reported that their supporters in Uzbekistan would try to clarify information about the fate of the illegally deported activist.
Meanwhile, human rights activist Vitaly Ponomarev from Memorial Human Rights Center began publishing Dadebaev’s story about how the secret services of Uzbekistan in 2016 tried to recruit him as an agent to work in other countries.
Source: Chronicles of Turkmenistan