KHORUGH, Tajikistan -- The parents of five young Tajik men from the volatile Gorno-Badakhshan region (GBAO) told RFE/RL on July 1 that the sons had been arrested and are being held in a pretrial detention in GBAO's capital, Khorugh, on unspecified charges.
The men have been held incommunicado since Russian authorities detained them and deported them to the Central Asian nation last month.
The relatives said then that the Tajik men, who are from the Yazgulom community, did not arrive at the airport in the southern city of Kulob, where they were expected to be taken from Moscow on June 20.
It remains unclear if the men were deported for violating Russia's migration regulations, or at the request of the Tajik authorities.
Sources close to Tajik law enforcement have told RFE/RL that, since May, at least 15 residents of Yazgulom had been extradited from Russia to Tajikistan, where they have been charged with "membership in an extremist organization" or "having links with members of an extremist organization."
There has been no official statement on the men's situation.
On May 16, Tajik security forces arrested more than 30 residents of Yazgulom, accusing them of plotting unspecified acts of sabotage.
Sources told RFE/RL at the time that those arrested were suspected of having links with the banned Ansarullah Islamic group.
Residents of GBAO have been under pressure for years. A crackdown on the restive Tajik region intensified in 2022 after mass protests in May that year were violently dispersed by security forces.
Tajik authorities said at the time that 10 people were killed and 27 injured during the clashes between protesters and police.
Residents of the remote region's Rushon district have told RFE/RL that 21 bodies were found at the sites of the clashes.
Dozens of the region's residents have been jailed for lengthy terms on terrorism and extremism charges since then.
Deep tensions between the government and residents of the volatile region have simmered ever since a five-year civil war broke out shortly after the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991.
Still, protests are rare in the tightly controlled state of 9.5 million where President Emomali Rahmon has ruled with an iron fist for nearly three decades.
