DUSHANBE, January 13, 2012, Asia-Plus -- A Moscow-based Tajik opposition journalist Dodojon Atovullo (Atovulloyev) has been attacked in a Moscow restaurant.  He was taken to hospital with a serious stab wound.

Dodojon Atovullo was attacked near the Viaggio Italian Restaurant yesterday night, between 9:00 and 10:00 pm.  According to some sources, an unknown man of Asian appearance attacked the journalist and inflicted two stab wounds on him.  Dodojon Atovullo was rushed to the Sklifosovsky Emergency Medicine Institute in serious condition.

Russia’s news agency, Itar Tass, reports police said he was attacked in a Moscow restaurant where another man approached him and “stabbed him with a knife after which the victim was hospitalized with a grave wound.”  Police said one of the versions of the attack was “domestic conflict.”

Dodojon Atovullo, 56, an exiled opposition journalist and outspoken critic of the Tajik government.  He runs an independent Tajik-language publication Charoghi Rouz .     

Atovulloyev was forced to leave Tajikistan in 2001 after being accused of insulting the president and “inciting national, racial, and religious hatred.”

The Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ) reported in 2008 that according to Tajik press reports, “the Interior Ministry issued an arrest warrant in September for Dodojon Atovullo… and the Prosecutor-General’s instituted criminal proceedings against Atovullo on the charges of “public calls to a violent change in the constitutional regime,” along with defamation and “public insult of the president.”

In 2011, Tajikistan’s Prosecutor’s General again instituted criminal proceedings against Atovullo and sent an extradition request to the Russian authorities but the Russian authorities refused the extradition request.