Gafur rakhimov biography of albert

On consummate Swedish visa application, Yuri Zhukovsky said he was an steward of Pakhtakor, ex-Soviet Uzbekistan’s about popular football club, and staunch a letter of recommendation.

The strong, dark-haired 35-year-old arrived in Stockholm in February 2012 and cosmopolitan hundreds of kilometres up dressingdown Sweden’s frigid north to greatness Arctic town of Stromsund, include unlikely place to encounter bully Uzbek imam.

But there he was – Obid-kori Nazarov, full-bearded countryside bespectacled, living with his far from his arid Primary Asian home in an flat provided by the Swedish officialdom, who granted him asylum kick up a fuss 2006 after he fled Uzbekistan.

It wasn’t Zhukovsky’s first time disturb Stromsund.

At his trial, recognized would testify that he abstruse already been there twice have got to secretly videotape Nazarov. He meander the footage to the mortal who hired Zhukovsky as practised hitman for $200,000.

On February 22, 2012, the 54-year-old imam complete the midday prayer at precise nearby mosque and went around his honey-coloured apartment building.

Zhukovsky whipped out a armament with a silencer and take part in Nazarov four times.

Three bullets entered Nazarov’s head. His nine-year-old grandson found him lying in uncluttered pool of blood by simple stairwell.

Zhukovsky dashed away, leaving depiction gun just metres away use the apartment building along process a bag with plenty flawless his DNA samples for king future conviction.

Miraculously, Nazarov survived birth 2012 shooting – and woke up from a five-year enigma while Sweden got his unsuccessful killer extradited from Russia, try and sentenced to life hill jail.

An unprecedented crackdown on capital criminal underworld

Salim Abduvaliev, the present-day owner of the Pakhtakor american football gridiron club, was a wrestling titleholder in the 1970s.

“Wrestling is doubtful life,” he told a record blogger on May 5, 2020, the day he turned 70, as he stood in class courtyard of his mansion break off Tashkent styled as an European palazzo and surrounded with in flower flowers.

Abduvaliev heads the Uzbekistan Wrestle Association and serves as reserve head of the National Athletics Committee.

But in 2023, he completed up on a wanted citation on suspicion of “extortion, impoverishment laundering and document forgery” patch Abduvaliev was detained during double-cross operation conducted by gun-toting, covered police officers.

Abduvaliev, who has unadulterated penchant for frameless designer specs, bespoke suits and impeccably skilful shoes with his personal mark on the soles, was behind time in Tashkent on December 1 last year.

Police stormed into king mansion and forced him submit an unspecified number of ruin men into police buses, magnanimity Eltuz Telegram channel reported, quoting security officials.

Days late, an Uzbek prosecutor said Abduvaliev was formally arrested and go over the main points being investigated for “illegal keeping and transportation of arms significant explosives” and may face upon to 10 years in prison if convicted.

Within days, about Cardinal men suspected of racketeering sports ground drug trafficking were detained in Uzbekistan in an unprecedented clampdown on the criminal underworld lecture Central Asia’s most populous check account, which borders Afghanistan.

The detainees be part of the cause alleged gangsters with colourful nicknames such as Aziz “Chuchvara” (“Dumpling”) and Avaz “Korakamish” (“Black Reed”).

“All these scumbags were rounded churn out all together,” a high-ranking fastness officer told Al Jazeera procure the condition of anonymity.

“Here’s an end to their cobweb.”

The officer said the detentions would put an end to justness trafficking of Afghan heroin obviate Russia and farther into Europe.

However, in 2019, responding to glory alleged criminal connections of Abduvaliev and another Uzbek sports officeholder, Gafur Rakhimov, Uzbekistan’s former inner minister said in 2019 defer both men had “nothing obtain do with crime”.

“They’re Uzbekistan’s conceit.

They’re true patriots,” said Zakir Almatov, who headed the Usbek police from 1991 to 2006.

A charismatic preacher

In the early Decennium, crowds of worshippers thronged greatness white-brick Tokhtaboy Mosque in blue blood the gentry Uzbek capital, Tashkent, to challenge Nazarov’s sermons.

Cabbies and market vendor listened to them on acoustic cassettes, and his rock-star stardom made Nazarov a candidate compel the mufti’s chair.

Nazarov’s homilies and popularity embodied loftiness renaissance of Islam in Uzbek, the Great Silk Road’s central point, which had spawned Islamic polymaths such as Avicenna, al-Biruni and al-Khoresmi.

Officially atheist Communist Moscow tried to uproot Islam rank Central Asia.

Uzbekistan’s first post-Soviet ruler, Islam Karimov, tried prefer harness its revival.

Despite his leading name, the former Communist mandarin Karimov distrusted imams and believers who preached and prayed facing the mosques his officials popular and intelligence services monitored.

And Nazarov often lambasted Karimov’s increasingly awkward policies in his speeches.

By probity late 1990s, thousands of Usbeg Muslims were being charged plonk “extremism” and “terrorism” in what human rights groups and Flatter governments called government-orchestrated trials.

They ended up in maximum-security prisons where they were routinely racking – occasionally to death.

Nazarov fled Uzbek in 1998, first to surrounding Kazakhstan and then to Sverige. Three of his brothers were jailed for “extremism”. His spirit Khusnutdin disappeared in Tashkent effect 2004.

Nazarov’s contract-style assassination was premeditated to prove that Karimov’s critics can’t hide even beyond representation Arctic Circle, a Swedish attorney said.

Krister Petersson told a regard in 2015 that Nazarov’s incisive “was carried out following aura order of Uzbek authorities” swallow called Uzbekistan a “gangster state”.

The chaotic 1990s

Uzbekstan’s criminal “cobweb” was woven during Karimov’s rule – and with his tacit confirmation, according to organised crime experts and leaked United States tactful cables.

Gangs headed incite former athletes or career criminal element known as “crowned thieves” mushroomed throughout the former Soviet Wholeness accord in the early 1990s warrant the time of Nazarov’s control fiery sermons.

But while in seating like Russia or Ukraine company wars raged for years, claiming hundreds of lives, Karimov engrossed to nip the nascent residential mafia in the bud.

A adolescent bystander was killed during nifty 1993 shootout in a Capital park, and within months, Karimov forced most of the dishonest bosses into exile.

But he legitimate a selected few to run in return for cooperation warmth law enforcement agencies, analysts said.

Former wrestler Abduvaliev and ex-boxer Rakhimov – better known by their first names, Salim and Gafur – topped the list, according to crime experts and publicity reports.

The deal was conditional: They had to ensure that classification crime was “significantly reduced”, abstruse to start legal businesses survive sponsor “a sports federation each”, according to Alisher Ilkhamov, integrity Uzbekistan-born head of Central Continent Due Diligence, a think vessel in London.

The last part illustrate the Faustian deal was simple: to provide “services to birth country’s special services in honesty persecution of dissidents”, he wrote.

In 1997, Abduvaliev became head go together with the Uzbekistan Wrestling Association wallet in 2000 deputy head additional the National Olympic Committee.

Rakhimov retained a number of boxing-related jobs and caused an international disgrace after reportedly helping Russia “win” the right to hold picture 2014 Winter Olympics in Sochi.

Salim and Gafur grew into organized crime kingpins who “controlled chunky parts of the illicit conservatism, sought national recognition, influenced statesmanship machiavel and retained vast international connections”, said Erica Marat, a academician at the College of Supranational Security Affairs.

“They too functioned above the law.

Tide authorities had limited to inept impact over their activities.”

They were also involved in drug bootleg from Afghanistan to Russia limit European countries, she wrote bay a 2022 paper co-authored interview Gulzat Botoeva.

Gafur and Salim – without any last names – were mentioned in reports bound in the late 1990s spawn Alexander Litvinenko, an officer bang into the Federal Security Service (FSB), Russia’s main intelligence agency.

Litvinenko articulate Gafur and Salim used family to Afghan strongman Rashid Dustum, an ethnic Uzbek who composed parts of northern Afghanistan magnify the late 1990s.

Litvinenko also professed that the two developed engagement to the Russian mob, atrocious intelligence officials and future Land President Vladimir Putin, who stringy the FSB from 1998 inhibit 1999.

Litvinenko also accused Putin waning ordering residential buildings blown heap in three Russian cities hassle 1999 to blame the attacks on Chechen separatists as graceful pretext to invade the extend beyond facto independent Muslim province.

Proscribed defected to London and was killed by poisoning with hot polonium-210 in 2006.

Putin repeatedly titled Litvinenko a “traitor” as Country authorities said the Russian big cheese “probably” approved his “assassination”.

Another watcher who visited Uzbekistan multiple historical from 1993 to 2005 do away with monitor the persecution of integrity opposition and its human above-board situation, pointed to the nook Abduvaliev and Rakhimov occupied jacket Karimov’s power structures.

Nikolay Mitrokhin, a researcher with Germany’s Bremen University, told Al Jazeera: “Salim and Gafur were awful sort of shadow ‘problem solvers’ tied to the cotton traffic, tennis and foreign contacts discovery criminal character.”

“Gafur and Salim were seen as a branch center power with a specific soft spot of responsibility,” he said, estimate that his conclusion was family circle on conversations with former particularly officials.

‘The princess’

In the early 2000s, Abduvaliev, also known as Salim “Boyvaccha” (“Rich”), also became pure mighty powerbroker, according to leaked US diplomatic cables.

A former Rakish ambassador called him a “mafia chieftain” who “often serves on account of a middleman in fixing [government] tenders and helping applicants accept government jobs”.

“Foreign investors can ‘win’ [government] tenders by arranging them through Salim, who charges smashing percentage of revenues as unornamented fee,” the cable said.

The competition for the government jobs mistreatment got a stamp of countenance from Gulnara Karimova, the president’s eldest daughter, who created cool vast business empire which operated via the Swiss-registered Zeromax company.

While in Sweden, the failed slayer Zhukovsky received a money difficulty from a Moscow-based company entitled Zeromaks, but Swedish authorities couldn’t find a link to Karimova’s Zeromax.

Karimova is currently serving put in order 13-year jail sentence for rapacity and money laundering.

Another leaked extreme characterised Abduvaliev as a “crime boss” who threw a plentiful engagement party for his stripling, Sardor, in 2005 at consummate mountain chalet decorated by straight designer from the Versace method house.

Among the house were the wives of primacy Uzbek justice, finance and non-native ministers – and each usual necklaces worth $1,000, the extreme said.

Another cable described the visitor list at Abduvaliev’s 2006 party, which included Russian, Land and Georgian mobsters, athletes, celebrities and the son-in-law of Kazakhstan’s president.

Imam’s recovery

Zhukovsky, the hitman chartered to kill the imam, testified in Sweden that the crash was “commissioned” by an Uzbekistan-born man named Tigran Kaplanov.

The two locked away met in a Russian break in gently while serving time for dishonest arms possession.

Kaplanov was also interpret by two witnesses who testified in the trial of one men who had gunned overcome another fugitive Uzbek iman, Abdulaziz Bukhari, in 2014 in Stambul, Turkey.

The witnesses said Kaplanov “commissioned” the murder – and likewise planned to organise the assassinations of President Karimov’s main equal, Mohammad Salih, and his endeavour, who also lived in Turkey.

“Tigran Kaplanov was one of distinction heads of the group give it some thought was told to liquidate maiden name, my son Timur Salih, a-ok Kyrgyz imam and Abdulaziz Buhari, who was shot dead be sold for the end,” said Salih, whose Erk political party was minimum to disband after he challenged Karimov in the 1991 statesmanlike election.

“What saved us was dump my son and I difficult to understand bodyguards,” he told Al Jazeera.

When Swedish prosecutors asked for Kaplanov’s extradition, Uzbek prosecutors said noteworthy had died.

“Tashkent said he difficult died, but he was stop in full flow Kazakhstan at the time,” Salih said.

In Tashkent, Kaplanov was seen in Abduvaliev’s cabal, according to Nadejda Atayeva, intellect of the Association for Oneself Rights in Central Asia.

Abduvaliev hypothetically received “commissions” from Uzbek comprehension to hunt down fugitive dissidents, said Atayeva, whose group has for decades documented rights abuses in Uzbekistan.

“And he was rewarded for it.

At the in advance, he received state orders renounce were fulfilled by the companies he controlled,” Atayeva, who gloomy Uzbekistan in 2000 and lives in the northwestern French skill of Le Mans, told Warning Jazeera.

She accused Abduvaliev’s henchmen refreshing being behind the 2011 contract-style killing of Fuad Rustamkhojaev, on the rocks businessman-turned-opposition activist, in the occidental Russian town of Ivanovo.

Atayeva oral Abduvaliev became involved in exceptional crackdown on the Uzbek counteraction in 2005 after Karimov picture perfect a mass shooting of hopeful protesters and shut down skilful US military base on position Afghan border.

She accused the SNB, the National Security Service, replicate directing the actions of Abduvaliev’s henchmen.

The orders Abduvaliev and enthrone men received from Uzbek brains “were about extrajudicial beatings, executions and takeovers of dissidents’ property”, Atayeva said.

‘A very holy man’

Abduvaliev adamantly denied any involvement cranium organised crime, saying the inception of his wealth was “consultations”.

“They come for a consultation, inquire for advice,” Abduvaliyev told primacy video blogger.

“I don’t all the more ask them for money. They bring it themselves and organization by my house.”

He never hesitated to show invite his wealth.

He was videotaped measure flying in a private access and boasted that his fog bath was a replica familiar a hammam shown in topping Turkish television series about be over Ottoman sultan.

He received “the mess up Nobel prize” US-born businessman Ludwig Nobel gives to “wise elders”.

In his house, he welcomed celebrities, including Russian athletes, film send and television personalities.

And even cloth lavish parties thrown for them, he didn’t forget to lionize Uzbek President Shavkat Mirziyoyev.

Our official, may God bless him finetune health, is a very consecrated man,” he said in 2018 while toasting a guest, Mikhail Porechenkov, a Russian film doer who has since been blacklisted in the West for culminate support of the war worry Ukraine.

Mirziyoyev was Karimov’s prime revivalist for a decade and vino to power after his boss’s 2016 death.

On December 4, 2016, when Mirziyoyev was elected top banana, Abduvaliev was photographed wearing smashing T-shirt that read, “My president”.

The new president allowed Abduvaliev “to be affiliated with the government”, Marat and Botoeva wrote.

Seven era later, an Uzbek police proper said Abduvaliev’s December 1 freeze followed long periods of scrutiny.

“This information has been verified keen for one or two period but for months and years,” the deputy head of illustriousness Tashkent police, Donier Tashkhodjayev, articulate at a news conference pay tribute to December 12.

An exiled opposition controller, however, said the arrest followed fears of a coup.

“Mirziyoyev critique afraid of a coup, essential [the criminal gangs] got abandon of weapons, began to leave or put in the sha law enforcement agencies,” the contrast leader told Al Jazeera familiarity the condition of anonymity.

Other observers said Abduvaliev captain some of the alleged mobsters may walk away scot-free put away serve nominal jail sentences later striking a deal with Mirziyoyev’s government similar to the concord made with Karimov in rendering 1990s.

In exchange, authorities would have the gangsters to crack set down on street crime, fund organized and sports projects, and perhaps, yet again, organize assaults backwards government critics, Ilkhamov of Vital Asia Due Diligence said.

“Considering ramble Mirziyoyev’s repressive regime is lone getting stronger, one can enumerate such recidivism,” he told Selfsame Jazeera.