Tajik court frees jailed pilots for smuggling

A court in Tajikistan freed two jailed pilots on Tuesday in a move that likely will help soothe the impoverished ex-Soviet Central Asian nation’s troubled ties with its main economic partner, Russia. Prosecutors had earlier requested the Khatlon province appeals court reduce the sentences against Russian pilot Vladimir Sadovnichy and Estonian citizen Alexei Rudenko on charges of illegally flying into Tajikistan and smuggling aircraft parts. The conviction this month prompted Russia to unleash a retaliatory wave of deportation orders against hundreds of Tajik labourers. Tajikistan’s economy relies heavily on the remittances provided by the many hundreds of thousands of Tajiks working in Russia. Tajikistan, a mountainous, largely Muslim, nation of 7 million people on Afghanistan’s northern border, has been battling to restore its economy since a brutal civil war in the 1990s that claimed more than 60,000 lives. The World Bank says about half of Tajikistan’s people live in poverty. That the request to commute the conviction came from prosecutors highlighted the political sensitivity of the case. Both Tajik President Emomali Rakhmon and his Russian counterpart Dmitry Medvedev have made public pronouncements on the issue. Sadovnichy and Rudenko have been in prison since their arrest in March. The court reduced their 8 1/2 year sentence to two and half years, but the men will be released because of a general amnesty commuting jail terms by two years. Since the conviction is still in force, Tajikistan will keep the two An-72 cargo planes confiscated from Russian transportation company Rolkan Ltd., which employed the pilots. Observers have speculated that the scale of the furor over the pilots may have been caused by more deep-seated tensions between Russia and Tajikistan. Over the past year, Moscow has been attempting to strong-arm Tajikistan into permitting Russian border troops to resume patrols of the rugged 1,350-kilometre frontier with Afghanistan. Tajik authorities have responded testily to such overtures, which they view as an attempt by the Kremlin to dilute their country’s sovereignty.