Tajikistan grants amnesty to prison population

The sweeping amnesty will free all women, men who committed their crime as minors, war veterans.

Tajik President Emomali Rakhmon has signed a law granting amnesties for 10,000 prisoners, half of the impoverished country's prison population, the presidential press service said on Wednesday.

- The president signed the law which was approved by the parliament of Tajikistan in connection with the celebration of the 15th anniversary of the Tajik constitution and the Year of the Great Imam - it said in a statement.

The bill involved an amnesty for more than 10,000 people, the presidential press service said in an earlier statement on October 26 when the bill was being debated.

The Tajik justice ministry declined to confirm the total number of prisoners in the country. But local rights groups put the number at 17,000 convicts with an additional 3,000 awaiting sentencing.

Tajikistan, a majority-Muslim country bordering war-wracked Afghanistan, earlier declared 2009 the year of Imam Abu Hanifa, the founder of the Hanafi school of Sunni Islam.

The sweeping amnesty will free all women, men who committed their crime as minors, war veterans and persons with physical and mental disabilities.

It was the twelfth amnesty in Tajikistan since it earned its independence from the Soviet Union in 1991, and comes as Dushanbe finds itself in dire financial circumstances.

Tajikistan, still reeling from a bloody civil war that killed tens of thousands and wrecked the economy in the 1990s, has struggled as remittances from migrant Tajik labourers have plummeted amid the global economic slowdown.

Migrant returns are now estimated as equivalent to around 30 percent of Tajikistan's gross domestic product (GDP), and the country finds itself with a shortage of able-bodied labourers.

Tajikistan has a population of around 7.5 million and the poverty rate is 60 percent.