The Pastdargom District Court of the Samarkand region has sanctioned the arrest of blogger Sirojiddin Adilov. He is suspected of committing crimes under Articles 168 (fraud) and 211 (giving a bribe) through Article 28 of the Criminal Code of Uzbekistan.
The Samarkand Regional Department of Internal Affairs had earlier reported the opening of a criminal case. According to the agency, a resident of the Pastdargom district born in 1961 filed a complaint with the district police. He said that in August 2024 he contacted a citizen identified as S.A., born in 1980 and living in Tashkent, asking him to help resolve a financial dispute with another person.
According to the investigation, this individual, although not an authorized official, received money from the complainant in exchange for a promise to resolve the matter in his favor. However, the promise has not been fulfilled to date.
A criminal case has been opened against the suspect under Part 3 of Article 168, as well as Articles 28 and 211 of the Criminal Code of Uzbekistan. Pre-trial detention has been chosen as the preventive measure. The investigation is being conducted by the Investigation Department under the Samarkand Regional Department of Internal Affairs.
Human rights defender Abdurakhmon Tashanov reported that the court authorized the arrest of Sirojiddin Adilov. According to him, the blogger is well known on social media and has a large audience on YouTube.
Adilov runs the Sirojiddin Media project on YouTube, where the channel has more than 900,000 subscribers. Around 47,000 people follow his page on Facebook, and more than 32,000 on Instagram.
Recently, the blogger had been covering a court case involving Gulirano Kosimova, the principal of School No. 29 in the Furkat district, who was suing officials from the Furkat District Department of Internal Affairs.
Tashanov also claims that the criminal case against Adilov was accompanied by procedural violations. According to him, two lawyers from Tashkent arrived at the court hearing on the preventive measure with official warrants, but they were not allowed to participate, and a state-appointed lawyer took part in the hearing instead.
“The right to defense is an inalienable human right, and a violation of this right raises doubts about the impartial consideration of the criminal case,” Tashanov wrote.
Since the beginning of 2026, this is not the first criminal case against journalists and bloggers in Uzbekistan.
At the end of January in Urgench, Furkat Ruzmetov, head of the Qonun doirasida project, and editorial staff member Azamat Avezov were taken into custody. They are suspected of defamation, extortion, and several other crimes. Both are lawyers.
On January 16, 2026, five people linked to the media outlet Taftish.uz were detained in Tashkent. They are suspected of committing crimes under Articles 165 (extortion) and 168 (fraud) of the Criminal Code of Uzbekistan.
On January 20, the Margilan City Criminal Court found journalist Elyor Tojiboev guilty under several articles of the Criminal Code and sentenced him to four years in a strict-regime penal colony.
In February, a criminal case was also opened in Tashkent against Demokrat.uz head Fazlidinkhon Mekhmonov and blogger Aziz Goipnazarov. According to investigators, they demanded $50,000 from a car dealership owner in exchange for deleting a compromising video. Mekhmonov was detained while receiving part of the money.