Akbar Akhmedov, a suspect in the abduction and murder of the deputy head of “Orienbank”, Shukhrat Ismatulloev, died in jail. This is reported by Radio “Ozodi” with reference to its own sources.

On September 2, three informed sources told Radio “Ozodi” that on August 30, employees of the Ministry of Internal Affairs in Dushanbe handed over Akbar Akhmedov's body to his parents, and warned them in no case to inform anyone about his death in the pre-trial detention center.

According to them, Akbar Akhmedov's body was not shown to his relatives, but was taken to the cemetery in Khujand in a coffin and buried in it.

According to radio sources, Akhmedov was arrested in mid-August of this year, when he voluntarily came to the security forces. According to sources, Akhmedov was on the run in Moscow, but the police detained his mother, after which the suspect had to surrender.

Akbar Akhmedov, according to the Prosecutor General's Office, was part of an organized criminal group that kidnapped Shukhrat Ismatulloev on June 23 and in one of the villages of the Varzob district, "using physical force, a stun gun, a car dryer and other equipment, tortured him to death," after which the criminals dumped his body into Zerafshan River.

Two months later, banker's body was found in the Sarazm area of the city of Penjikent.

The Prosecutor General's Office of the Republic of Tajikistan reported that 13 of the 16 alleged participants in this crime have already been arrested. The agency believes that Dilshod Saidmurodov was the leader of the gang and three others were directly involved in the banker's abduction together with him: Rustam Ashurov, Shokhrukh Khujaev and Akbar Akhmedov.

After the banker's murder, Saidmurodov and Akhmedov fled to Russia, and the other two to Turkey. On June 30, Ashurov flew from Turkey to Moldova, but they wouldn't let him go there, and Ashurov, snatching a gun from a Moldovan border guard, killed him and a security officer at the Chisinau airport, after which he received 10 bullets during detention and died in hospital a few days later.

Before his detention at the Chisinau airport, Ashurov called his mother and confessed to her that Ismatulloev had been abducted allegedly because of his bitcoins worth 100-200 million US dollars.