DUSHANBE, April 7, 2009, Asia-Plus  -- Owners of Dushanbe’s Zarnisor market, which the economic court closed last September – Yelena Metkova and Boturkhon Talbakov – at the end of last week sent a letter to Russia’s President Dmitry Medvedev, PM Vladimir Putin and Deputy Chairman of the State Duma (Russia’s lower chamber of parliament) Vladimir Zhirinovsky with solicitation to help solve a controversial property case.

We will recall that by ruling handed down by the High Economic Court on March 17 2009 the market that was allegedly built on illegally privatized property should be closed in order to free the land for development and the Dushanbe mayor’s office on April 1 gave merchants, running shops in the market, ten days to pull down the market.

On March 31, a group of women merchants gathered near the president’s office asking President Rahmon to intervene in the controversial case.  Yusuf Salimov, the head of the legal department within president’s office, received the women and suggested that they should apply to the Constitutional Court.

In the meantime, Shuhrat Qudratov, defense lawyer of the market owners, noted that the Zarnisor owners at the end of last week applied to the Russian Embassy in Dushanbe.  “We hope the Russian side will help solve the problems of Russian citizens – Ms. Metkova and Mr. Talbakov are Russian citizens,” said the lawyer, “More than 16 million somoni were invested in construction of the market”