Security Service Shakeup in Wake of Allamjonov Assassination Attempt

[ad_1] A month after the tried assassination of Komil Allamjonov, the previous deputy head of the Presidential Administration, a number of individuals have reportedly been detained and a bunch of safety officers have resigned or been fired. The continued evolution of the case – and what stays unsaid publicly however chattered about privately – hints at an intra-elite wrestle beneath the floor of Uzbekistan’s decidedly opaque political waters.

In response to the Uzbek Prosecutor Normal’s Workplace seven individuals have been recognized as concerned within the tried assassination of Allamjonov on October 26, 5 of whom had been detained quickly after the assault. Two others – “Okay.S.” and Javlon Yunusov – had been positioned on wished lists. In a November 25 Telegram assertion, the Prosecutor Normal’s Workplace stated Okay.S. was positioned in Kazakhstan and “investigative actions had been carried out along with his participation.”

Yunusov, solely suspect whose full title has been printed by the authorities, was detained in South Korea earlier in November . In its November 25 assertion, the Prosecutor Normal’s Workplace reported that he had been extradited again to Uzbekistan.

The day after the assault on Allamjonov, a pair of males appeared in a video that circulated by way of Uzbek social media claiming to be the triggermen. To make issues much more unusual, they claimed that it was all a arrange – feeding a rumor that had begun circulating that the assassination try had, bizarrely, been orchestrated by Allamjonov himself, or as the lads stated “in the most effective curiosity of [Allamjonov].”

A well-placed supply advised The Diplomat that Allamjonov has been topic to a virulent smear marketing campaign for months, including the rumor that the assassination try was a “PR stunt” to others already within the ether as proof of the involvement of a better authority – what the supply deemed “the workplace” and which different media have characterised as an alleged “deep state.”

RFE/RL’s Uzbek Service, Ozodlik, reported the identities of the lads within the video as Shokhrukh Ahmedov and Ismoil Jahongirov . Each names had been offered to The Diplomat in late October by a supply that linked them, as Ozodlik did, to an assassination try on critics of Chechen chief Ramzan Kadyrov in Turkiye in 2021.

Ozodlik reported that Ahmedov was a “bodyguard and driver” for Yunusov, who has a colourful felony historical past of his personal together with fraud and assault and is listed because the founding father of 18 corporations in Tashkent, a few of which contain prescribed drugs. The 2 triggermen reportedly drove from Tashkent to Fergana and ditched their automobile exterior a restaurant named Seoul. The cafe is reportedly owned by the household of Natalya Fen, the daughter of the late Vitaly Fen, a former ambassador of Uzbekistan to South Korea and, allegedly, Yunusov’s common-law spouse.

Some media reviews said that Fen has additionally been arrested; others stated that she was questioned and launched. The Prosecutor Normal’s Workplace has not offered an entire checklist of these detained in reference to the assassination try (although it has lectured the media on reporting something aside from official statements on the case).

Most critically, Ozodlik’s sources claimed that Yunusov “is the Fergana Valley ‘right-hand man’ of Otabek Umarov.”

Otabek Umarov is, amongst different issues, the deputy head of the Uzbek presidential safety service and President Shavkat Mirziyoyev’s son-in-law (he’s married to Mirziyoyev’s youngest daughter Shakhnoza). Ozodlik’s sources say that Umarov is linked to “the workplace.”

The Diplomat’s sources allege he's at its heart.

Because the investigation progressed, a lot of high-level safety officers in Tashkent have misplaced or left their jobs. These embrace the top of the State Safety Service, Abdusalom Azizov ; the top of the State Safety Service’s Inner Safety Directorate, Alijon Ashurov, and his brother, Sarvar, an aide to Uzbekistan’s prime minister; the top of the Ministry of Inner Affairs’ felony investigation service, Akhrorjon Adkhamov; First Deputy Chief of the Tashkent Most important Division of Inner Affairs Doniyor Tashkhojayev; and Timur Sobirov, the top of the Organized Crime Division in Tashkent.

In a November 26 report, Ozodlik said that “on the night of November 25, it turned recognized that Otabek Umarov had been dismissed from the publish of First Deputy Chairman of the Presidential Safety Service. This occurred on the day of Javlon Yunusov’s extradition from South Korea.”

That has not but been reported elsewhere.

What was being reported on November 25 in varied Uzbek media was that President Mirziyoyev had been elected chairman of Uzbekistan’s Nationwide Olympic Committee and that Umarov – already vice chairman of the Olympic Council of Asia (OCA) for the Central Asian area – had been elected as the primary deputy chairman. Uzbekistan’s Nationwide Olympic Committee shared a image of Umarov attending the committee’s meeting.

There are extra questions than solutions at this juncture and quite a lot of lacking items.

Critically, what hasn’t been said by officers is a motive for the assassination try. Allamajonov had not too long ago stepped down from his authorities job on the time. A lot of his profession trajectory since 2016 was in lock-step with that of Mirziyoyev’s eldest daughter, Saida Mirziyoyeva, till August 2023 when she was appointed assistant to the president, the very best place within the presidential administration after the president.

Sources, Ozodlik’s and The Diplomat’s alike, level to a battle between Allamjonov on one facet and Umarov and “the workplace” on the opposite. The roots and actual contours, mired within the murk and muck of rumor, are troublesome to discern, not to mention confirm. However there’s one thing stirring underneath the water.