A member of the group, also kidnapped from Turkiye earlier this year, was given a 20 year sentence. The exact charges are unknown.
By October 29, 2024 
Nine months after they , in mid-October Group 24 leader Sohrab Zafar and member Nasimjon Sharifov were in prison, respectively, by a court in Dushanbe.
Their trial was held in secret, , and the specific charges are unknown. In fact, Tajik officials have said very little about the case, and nothing about how the two men ended up back in Tajikistan.
Group 24 was founded in 2012 by businessman and politician Umarali Kuvvatov. Kuvvatov fled Tajikistan the same year, with the movement very much nascent. In 2014, after Kuvvatov called for protests against long-time Tajik President Emomali Rahmon, the group was banned, declared “extremist” by Dushanbe.
Kuvvatov was in Istanbul in early March 2015. Just ahead of his murder, Kuvvatov had been by Turkish authorities, ostensibly at the request of Tajikistan.
Zafar had lived in Turkiye since October 2014. He had been detained by Turkish authorities several times over the years but always released. When 2024, he was the second Group 24 member to vanish in less than a month. On February 25, Zafar had told ’s Tajik Service, Radio Ozodi, that Sharifov had left his home on February 23 and had not been heard from since. Sharifov had lived in Turkiye since 2015 and, like Zafar, had also been detained several times and released by Turkish authorities.
Speaking to in late February before he, too, disappeared, Zafar said that Group 24 had “bitter experience” with what happens when a person is kidnapped. He also said that members regularly receive threatening messages, ranging from death threats to threats of kidnapping, which they believe come from the Tajik security services.
Tajikistan punches well above its weight when it comes to .
Freedom House compiled a of 854 recorded direct, physical incidents of committed by 38 governments in 91 countries between 2014 and 2022. Just 10 countries were found to be responsible for 80 percent of the recorded incidents. China represented 30 percent with 253 cases, followed by Turkiye with 132 and Tajikistan with 64. Turkmenistan and Uzbekistan (36 cases each) were also among the top 10.
As :
It’s illuminating to think of these figures in contrast to population size. Tajikistan’s population is around 9.75 million; China’s is 1.4 billion. Tajikistan’s population is less than 1 percent of the population of China, and yet Dushanbe is reportedly responsible for 64 cases of transnational repression, about a quarter of those attributed to China.
Months after Zafar and Sharifov disappeared from Turkiye, Tajikistan’s Prosecutor General Yusuf Rahmon said at an that the investigation regarding the two men would be completed soon and be sent to court. He said nothing about how the two men ended up in Tajikistan.
Mohammad Sabir Abdukahhor, an activist with Group 24, told Radio Ozodi, that the case against the two men related to a charge of “calling to forcefully change the constitutional structure using the internet.” Other sources, and the context of the case, suggest that additional charges likely have included extremism and cooperating with banned organizations.
An unnamed source cited by Radio Ozodi said that both men, in their final statements in court, said they did not regret the path they chose. “Sohrab Zafar said that he did not take a bribe from anyone, did not steal anyone’s rights, did not kill anyone, and did not do anything against human law that he regrets. He said that I did not betray my people and our organization is not terrorist or extremist.”
The judge reportedly asked if the men knew what they had done was a crime and that they’d one day answer to the law for it. Zafar, according to the Radio Ozodi source, replied that he expected not only to be arrested and imprisoned, but to be killed.
Zafar’s mother spoke to after seeing her son, following the sentence. She said that her son “looked calm, was not depressed and did not repent.”
Group 24, in a on October 19, condemned the sentences as “unjust.”
“This sentence, which was made under conditions of pressure and disregard for human rights and full of slander, is another clear example of suppression of political freedoms and legal rights of people in the country.”