Watchdog

TASHKENT -- Jailed Uzbek writer Mamadali Mahmudov is facing an extension of his prison term.

Mahmudov, 72, finished serving a 14-year prison sentence last month.

Instead of being released, Mahmudov was transferred from a labor camp to a detention center in Tashkent.

Mahmudov's wife, Gulsara Mahmudova, told RFE/RL on March 20 that her husband was charged with violating penitentiary regulations and faced a new prison term of between three and five years.

Mahmudov authored many popular books and was once seen as a serious challenger to longtime President Islam Karimov.

He planned to run in Uzbekistan's 1991 presidential election, but the Central Election Commission rejected Mahmudov's candidacy.

He was sentenced to prison in 1999 after a Tashkent court found him guilty of involvement in an assassination attempt against Karimov.

The leader of the Russian opposition party Yabloko has condemned the public burning of his party’s books by self-proclaimed Russian Orthodox Christian activists.

Sergei Mitrokhin said on March 17 that he was waiting for an official reaction from President Vladimir Putin and the Russian Orthodox Church to what he called an "act of vandalism.”

On March 15, activists from a group called God's Will entered Yabloko's Moscow offices and took all the books and brochures displayed near the entrance.

They later publicly burned all the Yabloko materials near a monument to Adam and Eve outside a Moscow metro station, calling Yabloko a party of satanists and perverts.

A video of the incident was later placed on the website of the movement For Russia, Putin, and People's Front.

The movement later issued an apology to Yabloko.

WATCH: Russian Orthodox Christian activists burn Yabloko party materials (in Russian)