Kurbon Manonov, a member of the Islamic Renaissance Party of Tajikistan who died in prison in 2016. Source: Manonov family. On an August morning in 2015, Kurbon Manonov woke at dawn, rolled out his mat and knelt down, whispering one verse of the prayer after another, thanking Allah for all the blessings. He then went out onto the porch of his house in Sangi Javozak, a tiny kishlak of seven families in Tajikistan’s Khatlon region. Sipping his morning tea, he gazed at the Pamir Mountains surrounding the kishlak.
For the previous two months, Manonov, the 74-year-old leader of the local branch of the Islamic Renaissance Party of Tajikistan (IRPT), had been just like the mountains that hold the village in their stony embrace – intransigent and unswerving. After an ISIS flag appeared one morning in June 2015 in downtown Nurek, the neighbouring town, the State Committee of National Security (GKNB) started visiting Manonov, interrogating him, taking him into custody and beating him. The officials demanded that Manonov confess that he was responsible for the flag and that he was supposedly conspiring with ISIS to make Tajikistan part of Islamic State. Manonov denied any association with ISIS and told his family and fellow party members not to worry.
But when the GKNB turned up at his door that morning, he knew it was the end. Accompanied by three GKNB officers, Manonov walked down to the highway in Nurek, and was then driven to the GKNB office in Kurgontepe where he had been previously interrogated. That afternoon the officials brought him, in handcuffs, to the house of his children. He was allowed to change his clothes and hand over the IRPT office key to the authorities. As he was leaving with the GKNB officers for the detention facility, he turned to his children and told them this was the last time he would see them as a free man. As his son recalls, before getting into the officials’ car, his father lingered to look for the last time at the Pamir Mountains.
