Convicted journalist Dilmurod Sayid’s wife Barno Jumanova…

Uznews.net – Convicted journalist Dilmurod Sayid’s wife Barno Jumanova, 33, and their six-year-old daughter Ruhshana died in a traffic accident in Syrdarya Region on 5 November. They were driving to visit the journalist in prison.

Barno Jumanova and their common daughter Ruhshana were driving in a taxi from Tashkent to Navoiy, when they got involved in a traffic accident outside the village of Al-Altyn in Syr Darya Region. Details of the accident are not known. It is not clear either whether the other three passengers of the car and its driver are alive.

The chairman of the Ezgulik human rights society, Aburahman Tashanov, who acted as the journalist’s public defender at the trial, offered condolences to the parents of Jumanova and Sayid and express his hope that this tragedy was accidental, not orchestrated by the authorities.

Sayid’s lawyer Ruhiddin Kamilov also suggested that high speed was to blame for the accident.

Dilmurod Sayid, who protected farmers’ rights and was critical of the Uzbek authorities’ policy, was detained last February on trumped up charges of extortion and faking documents.

In July, a criminal court in Samarkand region sentenced him to 12.5 years in prison, while court of appeal upheld this ruling in September.

The journalist is serving his term in a prison in Navoiy. He has been suffering from tuberculosis in the past few years and his condition is very serious now.

For unknown reasons he has stopped maintaining relations with his ex-wife and their common children, and now after the deaths of Barno Jurayeva and their daughter, he seems to have no relatives left, except for his elderly parents.