KULOB, February 4, 2015, Asia-Plus -- Deputy chief prosecutor in Kulob, Fathiddin Zuhurov, has denied the report that a Russian officer beat a waiter at one of local restaurants as absolutely “baseless.”

We will recall that some media sources have reported that a Russian officer, who was identified as Captain Chemizov, being in a state of drunkenness severely beat a waiter at a restaurant in Kulob in late January.

“No criminal proceedings have been instituted and nobody has filed a complaint against servicemen of the 201st military base''s battalion deployed here,”  Zuhurov noted.

According to Ahmad Ibrohim, editor-in-chief of the Kulob independent weekly Payk , the chief of the Interior Ministry’s office, Lieutenant-Colonel Jumakhon Nazarov, says that such incidents have not been registered in criminal reports since the beginning of this year.    

Meanwhile, last summer, two Russian officers from the 201st military base''s unit in Dushanbe were arrested on suspicion of killing a local man, Rahimjon Teshaboyev.  That investigation is continuing.

The Russian military based deployed in Tajikistan is Russia''s largest non-naval military facility outside the country.  It was officially opened in Tajikistan in 2004 under a previous agreement, which was signed in 1993, and hosts Russia’s largest military contingent deployed abroad.

A total of some 7,000 Russian troops are stationed at three military facilities collectively known as the 201st military base - in Dushanbe, Qurghon Teppa, some 100 kilometers from Dushanbe, and Kulob, about 200 kilometers southwest of Dushanbe.