Tuesday, July 10, 2012 -
A executive of Tajikistan’s national airline company has been hospitalized in the Russian city of St. Petersburg after being violently assaulted by a group of local police officers late last week.
A colleague of Qiyomiddin Saidov, who heads the St Petersburg office of Tajikistan’s flag carrier Tajik Air, said the incident happened shortly after midnight last Saturday.
Saidov and a group of his guests had just left a restaurant he owns on Moskovsky Avenue in Admiralteysky district of St. Petersburg.
“Saidov was seeing his guests as far as their car, when a police car stopped near them and police officers asked to show their documents,” the independent Tajik media outlet Asia-Plus quoted Farrukh Sattorov, leader a locally-based Tajik youth group, as saying.
“Police officers then asked whether they have weapons and Saidov’s guests answered in the affirmative and showed permits to possess weapons,” Sattorov told the news agency in an interview.
An argument ensued, and then police officers handcuffed Saidov and struck him repeatedly.
“Saidov has already been in the Mariinsky Hospital for three days,” Sattorov told Asia-Plus.
Saidov is a co-founder of the St. Petersburg regional public organization ‘Youth Association of Tajik Students in St. Petersburg,’ which Sattorov heads.