Tajikistan's activist and politician Nuri was first arrested in 1973 for his religious activities - travelled widely promoting Islam. He spurned the official Islam tolerated by the Soviet authorities and preached illegally, establishing makeshift mosques and calling for pristine Islamic studies in Tajikistan. He was again arrested in 1986 on charges of 'anti-Soviet slander', imprisoned for 18 months and sent to Siberia to serve his sentence. After his freedom in 1988, when the communist rule was beginning to crack, Nuri became chief editor of the newspaper which the Tajik Muslim authorities were now able to publish and worked on a grammar of Arabic and his own poems. Nuri also saw his chance to bring the underground Islamic Renaissance Party (IRP) into open. The party's first public congress was held in Dushanbe in 1990, but despite mounting pressure the communists in power refused to allow it to field a candidate in the 1991 presidential elections. Tajikistan plunged into turmoil and Nuri found himself in exile in Afghanistan organising the war against the new president, Emomali Rashmonov. The war took about 100,000 lives before Nuri and Rashmonov signed a peace deal in 1997. In 1997, Nuri returned to his homeland with others as part of the peace agreement he helped to forge and was elected head of the Commission on National Reconciliation. Nuri suffered from cancer and an operation in Germany failed to halt its spread. Said Abdullo Nuri was born into a family of Islamic academics in the village of Oshtien, in the Tavil-dara region of Tajikistan.