Today, the Uchtepa District Criminal Court concluded the first-instance trial of blogger Mubashshir Ahmad (Alisher Tursunov).
According to the announced verdict, Mubashshir Ahmad was found guilty under:
- Article 156 of the Criminal Code (inciting national, racial, ethnic, or religious hatred), part 2;
- Article 244-1 (preparing, storing, distributing, or displaying materials that threaten public security and order), part 3, paragraph “g”;
- Article 244-3 (illegally preparing, storing, importing, or distributing religious materials).
Applying Article 57 of the Criminal Code (imposing a lighter sentence) and in accordance with Articles 59 (sentencing for multiple crimes) and 61 (rules for calculating cumulative sentences), he was sentenced to 2 years and 6 months of imprisonment in a general-regime colony.
The court also ordered to suspend and block the social media pages and channels “Mubashshir Ahmad” and “Azon Global – Muqobil axborot-tahliliy kanali” on Facebook, Instagram, Telegram, and YouTube.
The parties have the right to appeal the verdict of the Uchtepa District Criminal Court to the Criminal Panel of the Tashkent City Court in accordance with the established legal procedure and deadlines.
At the hearing on September 18, the state prosecutor — deputy prosecutor of the Uchtepa district Erkin Narzullayev — requested a sentence of 7 years in prison and a fine of 150 base calculation units (about 61.8 million soums) for Tursunov.
Alisher Tursunov, born in 1974 in Namangan, studied at Al-Azhar University in Cairo. He founded Azon New Media in 2017 and announced the closure of all its projects — Azon.uz, Azon FM, and Azon TV — in 2023. Later that year, in November, he launched the multilingual portal Azon Global.
He was detained in Turkey in December 2023, released in February 2024, and in 2025 was again detained and deported to Uzbekistan.
More materials about Mubashshir Ahmad: