Tajikistan’s rights record is yet again facing scrutiny. A 29-year-old Tajik man died recently in police custody after German immigration authorities forced him to return to his home country to apply for a visa despite his protests that doing so could put his life at risk.

Saidazam Rahmonov’s death is reviving questions about the use of torture in prisons in Tajikistan. It is also placing a spotlight on Germany’s record of deporting Tajik citizens despite credible human rights concerns.

“Rahmonov’s case should be a wake-up call for Germany to review the role it has played in these cases and to rethink its relationship with the authoritarian government in Tajikistan,” Hugh Williamson, director of Human Rights Watch’s Europe and Central division, said in a November 11 statement.

Tajik authorities claim that Rahmonov hung himself in his cell, but his relatives told RFE/RL’s Tajik service that his body showed signs of torture. Reports of torture and unexplained deaths remain widespread in Tajik prisons, according to Tajik NGO Mir Prava.

Freedom House, in its latest assessments of political conditions in Tajikistan, said the government “severely restricts political rights and civil liberties,” and that officials have muzzled political opposition and independent media, while exerting “tight control over religious expression and activity.”

Rahmonov had lived in Germany since 2019 and had married a German citizen, according to RFE/RL, known locally as Radio Ozodi. He did not have a valid visa, and German immigration authorities in the western state of Hesse, where he lived in a small town and worked in a hotel, required that he comply with German immigration law and apply for a visa in his home country. He returned to Tajikistan in June and was detained by Tajik authorities October 6 at Dushanbe airport while attempting to fly to a relative’s wedding in Russia.

Family members and friends told RFE/RL that security services interrogated Rahmonov about his large beard and accused him of being a terrorist based on religious videos found on his phone. Rahmonov was a devout Muslim but unaffiliated with any particular religious or political movement, according to his family.

Authorities found documents allegedly attesting to his membership in the terror group Islamic State and said that Rahmonov killed himself to evade prosecution, a diplomat at the Tajik embassy in Berlin told German daily Frankfurter Rundschau.

Tajik President Emomali Rahmon’s authoritarian government has increasingly clamped down on religious expression in the country. Rahmon came to power by defeating an Islamist-led coalition in the country’s bloody civil war in the 1990s. Throughout Rahmon’s tenure in power, Tajikistan has grappled with Islamic radical-inspired terror emanating from Afghanistan. In addition, radicalized Tajik citizens were responsible for carrying out the Crocus City Hall attack in Moscow in early 2024.

Tajik authorities on October 13 turned over Rahmonov’s body, which family members said bore bruises, broken bones and the signs of electric shocks, RFE/RL reported.

The local immigration office in Hesse said Rahmonov’s case was thoroughly reviewed, including by federal officials, and it was determined to be “reasonable” to require him to return to Tajikistan to apply for a visa in accordance with German law, Frankfurter Rundshau reported. Since 2023, Germany has repeatedly deported or forced the return of Tajik citizens, despite human rights concerns, according to HRW.

Germany deported opposition figures Abdullohi Shamsiddin and Dilmurod Ergashev in January 2023 and November 2024 respectively over public outcry, per HRW. In show trials staged in Tajikistan soon after they were deported, courts gave Shamsiddin a seven-year prison sentence and handed Ergashev eight years.

Germany has deported 88 people to Tajikistan since 2024 and rarely grants asylum to Tajiks, Frankfurter Rundschau reported in early November.

German immigration authorities use assurances from the Tajik government that human rights are respected in Tajikistan as evidence in immigration court, and the Interior Ministry has a “good working relationship” with Dushanbe, according to the newspaper and HRW.

The past year has been a particularly dark one for Tajik political prisoners. Between January and July, five prominent Pamiri activists and clerics imprisoned after a crackdown in the Gorno-Badakhshan Autonomous Region in 2022 died in custody under questionable circumstances. HRW, citing relatives, reported that the five were denied needed care to treat various medical conditions.