DUSHANBE — Tajikistan has sent a senior parliament deputy to Russia to monitor the investigation into the killing of a Tajik citizen in St. Petersburg, RFE/RL’s Tajik Service reports.
Tajik parliament spokesman Muhammadato Sultonov told RFE/RL that the trip by Mahmadali Vatanov — head of Tajikistan’s parliamentary Legislation and Human Rights Committee — to St. Petersburg on December 6 comes after concern was expressed by parliament speaker Shukurjon Zuhurov about the killing of Bahtiyor Rasulov.
Rasulov’s decapitated body was found with numerous stab wounds in a burned-out car in St. Petersburg’s outskirts in late November.
Rasulov, from the southern Tajik province of Khatlon, had worked as a taxi driver in St. Petersburg for several years.
Zuhurov last week publicly condemned the killing and expressed the hope that Russian law enforcement services “will prevent such shameful acts in the future.”
Sultonov told RFE/RL that Vatanov will stay in St. Petersburg until December 11 and meet with St. Petersburg authorities and representatives of Tajik labor migrants in Russia while there.
Read more in Tajik here