On his Swedish visa software, Yuri Zhukovsky mentioned he was an administrator of Pakhtakor, ex-Soviet Uzbekistan’s hottest soccer membership, and connected a letter of advice.
The burly, dark-haired 35-year-old arrived in Stockholm in February 2012 and travelled a whole lot of kilometres as much as Sweden’s frigid north to the Arctic city of Stromsund, an unlikely place to come across an Uzbek imam.
However there he was – Obid-kori Nazarov, full-bearded and bespectacled, dwelling along with his household removed from his arid Central Asian residence in an house supplied by the Swedish authorities, who granted him asylum in 2006 after he fled Uzbekistan.
It wasn’t Zhukovsky’s first time in Stromsund. At his trial, he would testify that he had already been there twice to secretly videotape Nazarov. He despatched the footage to the person who employed Zhukovsky as a hitman for $200,000.
On February 22, 2012, the 54-year-old imam completed the noon prayer at a close-by mosque and went to his honey-coloured house constructing.
Zhukovsky whipped out a gun with a silencer and shot Nazarov 4 instances. Three bullets entered Nazarov’s head. His nine-year-old grandson discovered him mendacity in a pool of blood by a stairwell.
Zhukovsky dashed away, leaving the gun simply metres away from the house constructing together with a bag with loads of his DNA samples for his future conviction.
Miraculously, Nazarov survived the 2012 taking pictures – and awakened from a five-year coma whereas Sweden obtained his failed killer extradited from Russia, tried and sentenced to life in jail.
An unprecedented crackdown on a legal underworld
Salim Abduvaliev, the reported proprietor of the Pakhtakor soccer membership, was a wrestling champion within the Nineteen Seventies.
“Wrestling is my life,” he informed a video blogger on Could 5, 2020, the day he turned 70, as he stood within the courtyard of his mansion in Tashkent styled as an Italian palazzo and surrounded with blossoming flowers.
Abduvaliev heads the Uzbekistan Wrestling Affiliation and serves as deputy head of the Nationwide Olympic Committee.
However in 2023, he ended up on a wished record on suspicion of “extortion, money laundering and document forgery” whereas Abduvaliev was detained throughout an operation performed by gun-toting, masked cops.
Abduvaliev, who has a penchant for frameless designer sun shades, bespoke fits and impeccably polished footwear along with his private emblem on the soles, was detained in Tashkent on December 1 final yr.
Police stormed into his mansion and compelled him and an unspecified variety of different males into police buses, the Eltuz Telegram channel reported, quoting safety officers.
Days later, an Uzbek prosecutor mentioned Abduvaliev was formally arrested and is being investigated for “illegal possession and transportation of arms and explosives” and will withstand 10 years in jail if convicted.
Inside days, about 200 males suspected of racketeering and drug trafficking have been detained all through Uzbekistan in an unprecedented crackdown on the legal underworld of Central Asia’s most populous nation, which borders Afghanistan.
The detainees included alleged gangsters with vibrant nicknames equivalent to Aziz “Chuchvara” (“Dumpling”) and Avaz “Korakamish” (“Black Reed”).
“All these scumbags were rounded up all together,” a high-ranking safety officer informed Al Jazeera on the situation of anonymity. “Here’s an end to their cobweb.”
The officer mentioned the detentions would put an finish to the trafficking of Afghan heroin to Russia and farther into Europe.
Nonetheless, in 2019, responding to the alleged legal connections of Abduvaliev and one other Uzbek sports activities functionary, Gafur Rakhimov, Uzbekistan’s former inside minister mentioned in 2019 that each males had “nothing to do with crime”.
“They’re Uzbekistan’s pride. They’re true patriots,” mentioned Zakir Almatov, who headed the Uzbek police from 1991 to 2006.
A charismatic preacher
Within the early Nineteen Nineties, crowds of worshippers thronged the white-brick Tokhtaboy Mosque within the Uzbek capital, Tashkent, to listen to Nazarov’s sermons.
Cabbies and market sellers listened to them on audio cassettes, and his rock-star fame made Nazarov a candidate for the mufti’s chair.
Nazarov’s homilies and recognition embodied the renaissance of Islam in Uzbekistan, the Nice Silk Highway’s focus, which had spawned Muslim polymaths equivalent to Avicenna, al-Biruni and al-Khoresmi.
Formally atheist Communist Moscow tried to uproot Islam in Central Asia. Uzbekistan’s first post-Soviet ruler, Islam Karimov, tried to harness its revival.
Regardless of his first identify, the previous Communist apparatchik Karimov distrusted imams and believers who preached and prayed outdoors the mosques his officers authorised and intelligence providers monitored.
And Nazarov typically lambasted Karimov’s more and more heavy-handed insurance policies in his speeches.
By the late Nineteen Nineties, 1000’s of Uzbek Muslims have been being charged with “extremism” and “terrorism” in what human rights teams and Western governments referred to as government-orchestrated trials. They ended up in maximum-security prisons the place they have been routinely tortured – often to loss of life.
Nazarov fled Uzbekistan in 1998, first to neighbouring Kazakhstan after which to Sweden. Three of his brothers have been jailed for “extremism”. His son Khusnutdin disappeared in Tashkent in 2004.
Nazarov’s contract-style assassination was designed to show that Karimov’s critics can’t disguise even past the Arctic Circle, a Swedish prosecutor mentioned.
Krister Petersson informed a courtroom in 2015 that Nazarov’s taking pictures “was carried out following an order of Uzbek authorities” and referred to as Uzbekistan a “gangster state”.
The chaotic Nineteen Nineties
Uzbekstan’s legal “cobweb” was woven throughout Karimov’s rule – and along with his tacit approval, based on organised crime specialists and leaked United States diplomatic cables.
Gangs headed by former athletes or profession criminals generally known as “crowned thieves” mushroomed all through the previous Soviet Union within the early Nineteen Nineties on the time of Nazarov’s first fiery sermons.
However whereas in locations like Russia or Ukraine gang wars raged for years, claiming a whole lot of lives, Karimov pledged to nip the nascent home mafia within the bud.
A teenage bystander was killed throughout a 1993 shootout in a Tashkent park, and inside months, Karimov pressured a lot of the legal bosses into exile.
However he allowed a particular few to function in return for cooperation with regulation enforcement businesses, analysts mentioned.
Former wrestler Abduvaliev and ex-boxer Rakhimov – higher identified by their first names, Salim and Gafur – topped the record, based on crime specialists and media stories.
The deal was conditional: That they had to make sure that road crime was “significantly reduced”, needed to begin authorized companies and sponsor “a sports federation each”, based on Alisher Ilkhamov, the Uzbekistan-born head of Central Asia Due Diligence, a suppose tank in London.
The final a part of the Faustian deal was easy: to supply “services to the country’s special services in the persecution of dissidents”, he wrote.
In 1997, Abduvaliev grew to become head of the Uzbekistan Wrestling Affiliation and in 2000 deputy head of the Nationwide Olympic Committee.
Rakhimov held a lot of boxing-related jobs and precipitated a world scandal after reportedly serving to Russia “win” the proper to carry the 2014 Winter Olympics in Sochi.
Salim and Gafur grew into organised crime kingpins who “controlled large parts of the illicit economy, sought national recognition, influenced politics and retained vast international connections”, mentioned Erica Marat, a professor on the Faculty of Worldwide Safety Affairs.
“They also functioned above the law. State authorities had limited to no impact over their activities.”
They have been additionally concerned in drug trafficking from Afghanistan to Russia and European counties, she wrote in a 2022 paper co-authored with Gulzat Botoeva.
Gafur and Salim – with none final names – have been talked about in stories written within the late Nineteen Nineties by Alexander Litvinenko, an officer with the Federal Safety Service (FSB), Russia’s predominant intelligence company.
Litvinenko mentioned Gafur and Salim used hyperlinks to Afghan warlord Rashid Dustum, an ethnic Uzbek who managed elements of northern Afghanistan within the late Nineteen Nineties.
Litvinenko additionally alleged that the 2 developed ties to the Russian mob, corrupt intelligence officers and future Russian President Vladimir Putin, who headed the FSB from 1998 to 1999.
Litvinenko additionally accused Putin of ordering residential buildings blown up in three Russian cities in 1999 guilty the assaults on Chechen separatists as a pretext to invade the de facto impartial Muslim province. He defected to London and was killed by poisoning with radioactive polonium-210 in 2006.
Putin repeatedly referred to as Litvinenko a “traitor” as British authorities mentioned the Russian president “probably” authorised his “assassination”.
One other observer who visited Uzbekistan a number of instances from 1993 to 2005 to watch the persecution of the opposition and its human rights scenario, pointed to the area of interest Abduvaliev and Rakhimov occupied in Karimov’s energy constructions.
Nikolay Mitrokhin, a researcher with Germany’s Bremen College, informed Al Jazeera: “Salim and Gafur were some sort of shadow ‘problem solvers’ tied to the cotton business, tennis and foreign contacts of criminal character.”
“Gafur and Salim were seen as a branch of power with a specific sphere of responsibility,” he mentioned, including that his conclusion was based mostly on conversations with former prime officers.
‘The princess’
Within the early 2000s, Abduvaliev, also called Salim “Boyvaccha” (“Rich”), additionally grew to become a mighty powerbroker, based on leaked US diplomatic cables.
A former US ambassador referred to as him a “mafia chieftain” who “often serves as a middleman in fixing [government] tenders and helping applicants obtain government jobs”.
“Foreign investors can ‘win’ [government] tenders by arranging them through Salim, who charges a percentage of revenues as a fee,” the cable mentioned.
The candidates for the federal government jobs then obtained a stamp of approval from Gulnara Karimova, the president’s eldest daughter, who created an enormous enterprise empire, which operated by way of the Swiss-registered Zeromax firm.
Whereas in Sweden, the failed killer Zhukovsky obtained a cash switch from a Moscow-based firm referred to as Zeromaks, however Swedish authorities couldn’t discover hyperlink it to Karimova’s Zeromax.
Karimova is presently serving a 13-year jail sentence for extortion and cash laundering.
One other leaked cable characterised Abduvaliev as a “crime boss” who threw a lavish engagement celebration for his son, Sardor, in 2005 at his mountain chalet adorned by a designer from the Versace trend home.
Among the many company have been the wives of the Uzbek justice, finance and international ministers – and every obtained necklaces value $1,000, the cable mentioned.
One other cable described the visitor record at Abduvaliev’s 2006 celebration, which included Russian, Ukrainian and Georgian mobsters, athletes, celebrities and the son-in-law of Kazakhstan’s president.
Imam’s restoration
Zhukovsky, the hitman employed to kill the imam, testified in Sweden that the hit was “commissioned” by an Uzbekistan-born man named Tigran Kaplanov. The 2 had met in a Russian jail whereas serving time for unlawful arms possession.
Kaplanov was additionally talked about by two witnesses who testified within the trial of two males who had gunned down one other fugitive Uzbek iman, Abdulaziz Bukhari, in 2014 in Istanbul, Turkey.
The witnesses mentioned Kaplanov “commissioned” the homicide – and likewise deliberate to organise the assassinations of President Karimov’s predominant rival, Mohammad Salih, and his son, who additionally lived in Turkey.
“Tigran Kaplanov was one of the heads of the group that was told to liquidate me, my son Timur Salih, a Kyrgyz imam and Abdulaziz Buhari, who was shot dead in the end,” mentioned Salih, whose Erk political celebration was pressured to disband after he challenged Karimov within the 1991 presidential election.
“What saved us was that my son and I had bodyguards,” he informed Al Jazeera.
When Swedish prosecutors requested for Kaplanov’s extradition, Uzbek prosecutors mentioned he had died.
“Tashkent said he had died, but he was in Kazakhstan at the time,” Salih mentioned.
In Tashkent, Kaplanov was seen in Abduvaliev’s coterie, based on Nadejda Atayeva, head of the Affiliation for Human Rights in Central Asia.
Abduvaliev allegedly obtained “commissions” from Uzbek intelligence to seek out fugitive dissidents, mentioned Atayeva, whose group has for many years documented rights abuses in Uzbekistan.
“And he was rewarded for it. At the time, he received state orders that were fulfilled by the companies he controlled,” Atayeva, who fled Uzbekistan in 2000 and lives within the northwestern French metropolis of Le Mans, informed Al Jazeera.
She accused Abduvaliev’s henchmen of being behind the 2011 contract-style killing of Fuad Rustamkhojaev, a businessman-turned-opposition activist, within the western Russian city of Ivanovo.
Atayeva mentioned Abduvaliev grew to become concerned in a crackdown on the Uzbek opposition in 2005 after Karimov ordered a mass taking pictures of opposition protesters and shut down a US navy base on the Afghan border.
She accused the SNB, the Nationwide Safety Service, of directing the actions of Abduvaliev’s henchmen.
The orders Abduvaliev and his males obtained from Uzbek intelligence “were about extrajudicial beatings, executions and takeovers of dissidents’ property”, Atayeva mentioned.
‘A very holy man’
Abduvaliev adamantly denied any involvement in organised crime, saying the supply of his wealth was “consultations”.
“They come for a consultation, ask for advice,” Abduvaliyev informed the video blogger. “I don’t even ask them for money. They bring it themselves and leave by my house.”
He by no means hesitated to point out off his wealth.
He was videotaped whereas flying in a personal jet and boasted that his steam bathtub was a duplicate of a hammam proven in a Turkish tv sequence about an Ottoman sultan.
He obtained “the other Nobel prize” the US-born businessman Ludwig Nobel offers to “wise elders”.
In his home, he welcomed celebrities, together with Russian athletes, movie actors and tv personalities.
And even throughout lavish events thrown for them, he didn’t overlook to reward Uzbek President Shavkat Mirziyoyev.
Our president, could God bless him with well being, is a really holy man,” he mentioned in 2018 whereas toasting a visitor, Mikhail Porechenkov, a Russian movie actor who has since been blacklisted within the West for his help of the battle in Ukraine.
Mirziyoyev was Karimov’s prime minister for a decade and rose to energy after his boss’s 2016 loss of life.
On December 4, 2016, when Mirziyoyev was elected president, Abduvaliev was photographed carrying a T-shirt that learn, “My president”.
The brand new president allowed Abduvaliev “to be affiliated with the government”, Marat and Botoeva wrote.
Seven years later, an Uzbek police official mentioned Abduvaliev’s December 1 arrest adopted lengthy durations of scrutiny.
“This information has been verified not for one or two days but for months and years,” the deputy head of the Tashkent police, Donier Tashkhodjayev, mentioned at a information convention on December 12.
An exiled opposition chief, nonetheless, mentioned the arrest adopted fears of a coup.
“Mirziyoyev is afraid of a coup, and [the criminal gangs] got hold of weapons, began to dominate law enforcement agencies,” the opposition chief informed Al Jazeera on the situation of anonymity.
Different observers mentioned Abduvaliev and a number of the alleged mobsters could stroll away scot-free or serve nominal jail sentences after hanging a take care of Mirziyoyev’s authorities much like the pact made with Karimov within the Nineteen Nineties.
In alternate, authorities would count on the gangsters to crack down on road crime, fund social and sports activities initiatives, and possibly, but once more, set up assaults on authorities critics, Ilkhamov of Central Asia Due Diligence mentioned.
“Considering that Mirziyoyev’s repressive regime is only getting stronger, one can expect such recidivism,” he informed Al Jazeera.