Journalist Ali Feruz gets a shot at breaking free from Russia and Uzbekistan

The last few weeks have brought good news for the journalist Ali Feruz (real name: Khudoberdi Nurmatov), who’s currently being held at a detention center in Moscow, where he faces deportation to Uzbekistan.

On January 24, Russia’s Supreme Court threw out a deportation order from August 2017 (which hadn’t yet been implemented, thanks to a stay order by the European Court of Human Rights), and it ordered a retrial. 

On Friday, the Moscow City Court ruled that Feruz can leave Russia willingly, if he can produce the necessary travel documents. Feruz says he doesn’t want to stay in Russia and might go to Germany using papers from the Red Cross.

Feruz is charged with living and working illegally in Russia. In August 2017, a court ordered his deportation back to Uzbekistan, where Feruz said he would face torture by police.

On Thursday, February 1, a court fined the newspaper Novaya Gazeta 400,000 rubles ($7,100) for publishing articles by Feruz, ruling that the paper hired him illegally. Novaya Gazeta says it plans to appeal the decision.