Freedom House The following January he was abducted and reappeared in Tajikistan, where he was tortured and sentenced to 17 years in prison.320 In March 2015, Umarali Kuvvatov, another opposition leader in exile, was shot and killed on the street in Istanbul soon after he had applied for asylum.321 Authorities in Azerbaijan also aggressively target opposition figures and journalists abroad. Since 2014, they have conducted five renditions, from Ukraine, Georgia, and Turkey. In four of the cases, the victim was a journalist or a journalist’s spouse. Journalist Afgan Muxtarli was kidnapped off the street in Tbilisi in May 2017 and reappeared a day later in the custody of authorities in Azerbaijan.322 In at least two other cases, Azerbaijan authorities used Interpol notices to have individuals detained abroad so they could be subject to further targeting. For example, journalist Fikret Huseynli, who had received refugee protection in the Netherlands, was detained in Ukraine and had his passport held, awaiting determination of his case based on an Interpol filing. While he was stuck in Ukraine, men speaking Azeri assaulted him, though he was ultimately able to flee the country.323 Kazakhstan’s transnational repression efforts have focused on political opposition figures and former insiders, especially associates of Mukhtar Ablyazov, a former minister and banking official accused of widespread embezzlement and financing revolutionary activities. Ablyazov himself was detained in France in 2013, before the reporting period, and detained for most of the following three years; his wife and daughter were seized and rendered to Kazakhstan from Italy in 2013; they were permitted to returned to Italy after an international outcry.324 Multiple people from Ablyazov’s circle were also detained in Europe, often based on Interpol notices, only to be later released.325 Several other targeted activists have been linked to Ablyazov by Kazakhstani authorities. In one extreme case, activist and blogger Murat Tungishbayev was unlawfully deported from Kyrgyzstan to Kazakhstan in June 2018, despite having a pending asylum application in Kyrgyzstan.326 In Kyrgyzstan, there is less evidence of a systematic campaign. Four of the five cases included in Freedom House’s count involved the targeting of ethnic Uzbeks who fled Kyrgyzstan following pogroms in southern Kyrgyzstan in 2010. They were detained on Kyrgyzstani requests in Russia in 2013 and 2014, but eventually released following legal challenges. The most recent case from Kyrgyzstan is that of the husband of a prominent anticorruption campaigner, who was detained at an airport in neighboring Kazakhstan, and immediately returned to Kyrgyzstan.327 Azerbaijan, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan, Turkmenistan, and Uzbekistan have all used physical transnational repression against exiles since 2014. In terms of host countries, Russia features prominently: 51 of the 111 physical incidents documented in Eurasia (46 percent) occurred in Russia. Most detentions did not have a clear conclusion, or resulted eventually in the release of the exile after legal challenges. Turkey is the other most important host country for the region, especially in terms of extreme incidents like assassinations and renditions. In the last six years, there have been assassinations of exiles from Chechnya, Uzbekistan, and Tajikistan, and renditions of exiles from Azerbaijan and Tajikistan, within Turkey’s borders. Turkmenistani and Tajikistani exiles have also experienced detentions at the origin country’s request. freedomhouse.org 49