IV. TORTURE AND DUE PROCESS VIOLATIONS

The process by which law enforcement agents carry out the arrest, detention, and interrogation of independent Muslims involves a series of violations of due process and other basic rights. Save for exceptional cases, criminal suspects are kept in custody prior to trial. Uzbekistan's legal system does not allow for habeas corpus, or judicial review of arrest.[688] Police and security agents exploit this legal void by carrying out unsanctioned detentions, illegal searches, and planting or fabricating evidence to justify arrests. They also deny detainees the right to legal counsel, fail to notify their families of their detention, and then isolate them from their families.[689] In addition, the torture of independent Muslim detainees has become an unmistakable element of the campaign against independent Islam. Police and security agents use torture to coerce confessions and testimony from detainees and witnesses, in violation of Uzbekistan's obligations under the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights and the Convention against Torture and Other Cruel and Inhuman or Degrading Treatment or Punishment.[690] This chapter documents these abuses during the preliminary investigation phase, before suspects are formally charged, when the most severe abuse takes place. Due process violations that occur during investigation: unsanctioned arrests and searches, the planting of evidence, incommunicado detentions, and the denial of access to counsel are described in "Unsanctioned Arrests, Searches, and Planting of Evidence." "Torture and Mistreatment in Pre-trial Detention" presents evidence of torture of independent Muslim detainees in pre-trial custody.

Agents from the Ministry of Internal Affairs' Department for Combating Corruption, Racketeering, and Terrorism, and the ministry's special forces (OMON), have taken the lead in searches, detentions, interrogations, and torture of independent Muslims.[691] As the testimony of numerous witnesses indicates, the National Security Service is also involved in this campaign and in particular the torture of Muslim detainees.

Unsanctioned Arrests, Searches, and Planting of Evidence

The right to protection from unlawful and arbitrary interference in one's privacy, family, and home is set out in international legal instruments. In particular, articles 9 and 16 of the ICCPR. The General Comment to article 16 states that, "Searches of a person's home should be restricted to a search for necessary evidence and should not be allowed to amount to harassment."[692]

Domestic law in Uzbekistan similarly sets out guidelines for law enforcement in conducting detentions and searches.[693] Uzbekistan's Criminal Procedure Code stipulates that, except in cases of particular urgency, searches must be sanctioned by a warrant from an interrogator, investigator, or court prior to being carried out. The warrant must be presented to the subject and should declare specifically what is being sought and who is accused of possession of material relevant to a case. Persons presented with such an order are to be given the opportunity to voluntarily hand over the materials being sought. Uzbekistan's law also provides that subjects of a search have the right to be present during all stages of the police investigation, to have any comments recorded in the search report, and to have witnesses present during the search. It states that law enforcement officials must also have due cause to carry out a detention. Uzbek police must identify themselves upon detaining someone, including by providing identification documents to the detainee upon request.

The reality of the police conduct of searches and detentions or arrests departs radically from the guidelines in the law books. Police have consistently violated due process in conducting arrests and searches of independent Muslims. Officers not only fail or refuse to identify themselves, but often take measures to disguise their identity, such as by wearing black ski masks during raids. Charges brought subsequent to a detention often have only a remote connection to the purpose used initially to justify searching a home or placing someone in custody. The laws on search and seizure are routinely undermined, as when police conduct searches without a warrant, without announcing themselves or giving any declaration regarding the materials being sought. In flagrant violation of due process is the regular police practice of planting evidence on a person or in his or her home in order to justify a detention. Measures meant to protect the subjects of a search, such as recourse to comment in the search report and the right to have witnesses present are often not complied with; and in many cases police simply force the subjects of a search to relinquish these rights.

Contrary to the spirit of Uzbekistan's domestic law and the stipulations of international law, police and security forces also harass and intimidate the subjects of searches and detentions. The force deployed to conduct arrests and raids merits mention here. Uniformed officers and armed agents in civilian clothes typically work together; soldiers are used to block off entire neighborhoods during raids on private homes. The raids themselves have often been conducted at night. Masked armed officers in dark clothes scale the walls of domestic courtyards and invade family homes, often in the presence of small children. The operations have been conducted as though the suspects were heavily armed and militarily organized. In many cases, however, even after one or more thorough police searches, the suspects are found to "possess" perhaps a few bullets, a lone hand grenade, a religious magazine, or some leaflets.

§ Police used the tactics outlined above when they stormed the home of Imam Abdurakhim Abdurakhmonov well after midnight on June 18, 1998. According to an eyewitness, some ten to fifteen armed officers in civilian clothes climbed over the wall into the family courtyard, broke into the house, and pulled the imam from his bed.[694]

§ The mother of one young man tried along with fourteen others in December 1998 on religion-related charges, in a case that came to be known as "the Andijan 15," recalled her terror the day police raided her home to arrest her son. She told Human Rights Watch that before dawn one day in April 1998, an entire busload of armed and uniformed OMON officers stormed the family home and surrounded the area. They arrested the woman's son from his place of work nearby, but continued to occupy the house until evening. Without showing any warrant for a search, the OMON officers ransacked the premises, tore up floorboards, and confiscated five books of hadith in Arabic.[695]

Arrests without Warrant

Security agents carrying out arrests of independent Muslims have often lied about their purpose. They have stated, for instance, that a person was being taken in for "informal questioning" or was needed as a witness in a case. This obviates the need for an arrest warrant, quiets relatives' protests, and buys time before the family starts making inquiries regarding the detainee's status, whereabouts, and physical condition.

§ When Ministry of Internal Affairs officers took Imam Iuldashev into the ministry's custody in February 1999, they told him that he was being taken in for informal questioning and would be released promptly.[696] Upon arrival at the ministry, Iuldashev was beaten and placed under arrest on charges of illegal possession of narcotics.[697]

§ One woman whose son was arrested in May 2000 told Human Rights Watch, "The police came and said they just wanted to question him, to show him some photographs because he had witnessed a murder."[698] The woman's son did not serve as a witness in any murder trial and was instead arrested and convicted for violation of laws against unregistered religious activity.[699]

§ "He was taken on February 10, 2000, at around 5:00 or 6:00 a.m. They said he would be back at 3:00. It was four days before we even found out where he was," recalled a relative of one of fifteen men arrested in Tashkent for studying Islam in private and convicted on charges of anti-state activity in November 2000.[700]

§ The mother of one religious Muslim prisoner described her son's arrest in his home in Tashkent in late 1999, "…They took him and said it would be only for one hour. The next day I went to the station. They opened a door to let me hear that he was alive…."[701]

Unsanctioned Searches

In some cases the arresting officers show a search or arrest warrant, but in many cases they do not. Identifying documents are sometimes shown, sometimes not. The officers often act with violence toward unarmed relatives of the person they have come to detain. Detainees and family members are forced, through threats, to sign search reports confirming what officers have done and what they have supposedly found. Relatives are seldom given a copy to keep for future reference or use in legal proceedings.

During earlier stages of the campaign against independent Muslims, the courts regularly convicted defendants based on the claims made by police that they had found narcotics, weapons, or ammunition in the defendants' homes or on their person. In more recent years, such evidence continues to be produced and used to justify arrest, but has sometimes been discarded and excluded from the criminal case once police have secured a confession.[702] In order to verify that evidence has been "found" at the suspect's home, police sometimes bring their own witnesses for use in court.

§ Police forced their way into the home of Abdurashid Isakhojaev and failed to present his wife with a warrant certifying their right to search the premises.[703] In the absence of witnesses, the officers then claimed to find a grenade in the home; this was used to justify Isakhojaev's arrest-which had actually taken place hours earlier.[704]

§ According to eyewitnesses, thirteen armed SNB officers dressed in camouflage raided the Andijan home of Shukhrat Parpiev on April 19, 1998. The officers failed to produce a warrant to search the home or to summon independent witnesses to observe the operation.[705] Persons close to Parpiev told Human Rights Watch that the SNB officers searched the house for nine hours, until one officer planted four bullets and one wire meant for explosives in the family home.[706] Family members witnessed the officer's actions and called out to alert Parpiev's father.[707] The planted evidence was used to justify Parpiev's arrest, but the charges were later dropped when the case went to court.[708]

Human Rights Watch received reports from rights activists in the Fergana Valley and Tashkent that men feared the planting of false evidence by police to such an extent that some resorted to sewing up the pockets of their pants. During its research into arrests of independent Muslims in the Fergana Valley in 1998, Human Rights Watch also found that, "…men in that area tried to wear clothing without pockets to help deter such commonly used set-ups."[709] One young man detained by police in Tashkent in 1998 kept his hands in his pockets during police interrogation to avoid having contraband planted on him.[710]

§ Even crude planting of evidence has proven effective for police. The first time police arrested Shukhrat Abdurakhimov was on September 19, 1998. Officers entered the family home without a warrant and, searching the premises, claimed to find marijuana on his person.[711] Authorities later claimed the search was part of a regular passport check in the area.[712] The next day, Abdurakhimov's relatives were told that he had escaped from police custody, a story they did not believe.[713] Abdurakhimov reportedly came home from time to time and was in the family apartment on the night of April 12, 1999, when police raided the house and arrested him again.[714] Arresting officers allegedly struck Abdurakhimov's wife repeatedly. After taking Abdurakhimov away, police returned to search the family home, without producing a search warrant and refusing to identify themselves.[715] An eyewitness to the search told Human Rights Watch, "I watched them ransack the apartment and they found nothing. Then I saw one man take a paper out of his sleeve, drop it among the children's toys and then 'find' it and unwrap it. It had a bullet in it. He was in civilian clothes and he refused to identify himself."[716] Abdurakhimov's mother, present during the search, accused the officer of wrongdoing and tried to snatch the bullet away from him, whereupon he grabbed the elderly woman, twisted her arm behind her back and threw her to the floor.[717] The officers pulled the family's religious books off the shelves and photographed them. They also asked Abdurakhimov's mother where he had gotten his copy of the Koran and from whom.[718] Officers wrote up a report of the search, claiming they had found marijuana on Abdurakhimov and religious books and one bullet in his home, and had the report signed by the witnesses they had brought along. The police investigator returned later to the Abdurakhimov home and forced the young man's mother to sign the report as well, despite her objections that the evidence supposedly found had in fact been planted.[719] The family was not given a copy of this report.

In August 1999 the Tashkent Province Court tried Shukhrat Abdurakhimov and two others on charges related to alleged membership in Hizb ut-Tahrir. Among the charges against Abdurakhimov were allegations of possessing marijuana and one bullet. The police held Abdurakhimov incommunicado for five months during which time he was interrogated and eventually signed a statement incriminating himself on the charges of illegal possession of narcotics and ammunition. He is currently serving a seventeen-year term in Jaslyk prison. In the court verdict against Abdurakhimov the judge noted that among other evidence of criminality police had found "eight notebooks with religious notes" in the young man's home.[720]

§ The wife of one of the defendants in the Tashkent City Court trial of twelve men accused of Hizb ut-Tahrir membership in May 1999 similarly charged that evidence of drug possession had been falsified.[721] She claimed she had never seen narcotics in her home and further noted that the judge in the case failed to ask where or how her husband had supposedly obtained the narcotics.[722]

The defendant's wife described the incident and noted that the planting of evidence on her husband had been denounced by witnesses, in spite of police pressure. During the summer of 1998, she said, police had stopped her husband's car, badly beaten him and some of his co-workers in the street, and then arrested them.[723] Her husband, she said, felt police put something in his pants pocket. At the police station, he reportedly refused to take the planted evidence out of his pocket, stating that it did not belong to him. Eventually he removed the narcotics from his pocket, again insisting that the drugs were not his. Two strangers brought in off the street to serve as witnesses to the body search saw him remove the packet and heard his protests. They refused to sign the police report stating that drugs were found on the man.[724] Police found their position unacceptable. The arrest had taken place at about 11:30 a.m. The witnesses were kept at the police station until 2:00 a.m. the next day, at which point they finally agreed to sign the police statement. In court, however, they testified that they had been threatened by police and frightened into signing the statement.[725]

Planting of Islamic Literature

Particularly after February 1999, police planted banned Islamic literature, often Hizb ut-Tahrir literature and the Al-Vai magazine, to incriminate independent Muslims, including those who were not affiliated with or sympathetic to the Hizb ut-Tahrir organization. This phenomenon seemed especially prevalent in the Namangan province of the Fergana Valley.

§ Following the June 1999 arrest of Hizb ut-Tahrir member Shoknoza Musaeva, Tashkent police conducted a search of her home without family members or witnesses present.[726] During the search, which was videotaped, police allegedly planted Hizb ut-Tahrir books and leaflets, which they then claimed to find among Musaeva's belongings.[727] The possession of this literature along with the allegation that Musaeva used it to teach others the ideas of Hizb ut-Tahrir provided the basis of the state's case against the twenty-nine-year-old woman.[728] Musaeva was sentenced to seven years in prison.[729]

§ An eyewitness charged that police also planted Hizb ut-Tahrir literature in the home of Musaeva's neighbor, who was arrested along with one of Musaeva's brothers just two weeks after her own detention. Police claimed to have found the group's literature in Mirabid Iakiaev's home, but an eyewitness present during the police search told Human Rights Watch that officers found nothing incriminating.[730] The eyewitness further stated that she saw the report that officers originally wrote at the scene attesting to having found nothing illegal.[731] The later police claims were included in the indictment against Iakiaev but, interestingly, the Chirchik City Court found that the relevant charge-that Iakiaev possessed "materials containing ideas of religious extremism, separatism, or fundamentalism"-had not been proven during the trial. The judge, however, found Iakiaev guilty of anti-state activity and sentenced him to five years in prison.[732]

According to a rights activist in Fergana city, the majority of independent Muslims arrested in the Fergana province were charged with "Wahhabism" rather than membership in Hizb ut-Tahrir.[733] He noted, however, that police officers and investigators often failed to distinguish between so-called Wahhabis and members of Hizb ut-Tahrir. For example, police planted Hizb ut-Tahrir leaflets on suspected "Wahhabis" to justify arrest. "Leaflets are more popular now than bullets or drugs," the activist said, describing police tactics.[734] In court, the accused were referred to as "Wahhabis" and not tried for Hizb ut-Tahrir membership.[735]

§ In May 1999 police arrested an elderly man from Namangan for "illegally going on Hajj" and accused him of Wahhabism. According to the man, officers planted Hizb ut-Tahrir leaflets in his house to justify the arrest. On the strength of police claims regarding the literature and testimony given by a witness whom the accused man said was a complete stranger, the Namangan Province Court sentenced him to three and a half years in prison on charges of anti-constitutional activity.[736] The man was imprisoned in Almalik prison and later released under the 2001 presidential amnesty.[737] Another Namangan man, who was also sent to prison for three years and subsequently released under presidential amnesty gave a similar account of local police planting leaflets in his home.[738]

Police have also frequently confiscated sanctioned religious texts-such as the Koran and works of Islamic scholar Al-Bukhari-and called them prohibited or "extremist" literature. Such materials, if used in prosecutions, has not generally been cited as evidence of criminality but rather of a general fanaticism in religious matters. In the cases reviewed by Human Rights Watch, sanctioned literature was usually returned to the family of a detainee after he had signed a self-incriminating statement.

Incommunicado Detention

Many of those arrested on religion-related charges have been kept for days and even months in the basements of police stations, where conditions were particularly harsh. They were held incommunicado, isolated from family visitors, legal counsel, fellow detainees, and any possible impartial police authorities. This in turn facilitated torture. The three cases described below illustrate this pattern of detention in basement cells:

§ Abdurashid Isakhojaev told his mother that police kept him in the basement of the Ministry of Internal Affairs for the first twenty-four days of his detention in 1998. Isakhojaev alleged that officers tortured him while he was confined to the basement, causing serious injury.[739]

§ Accused of being a Wahhabi, Khusan Maksudov testified in court to his fear of the Ministry of Internal Affairs (MVD) basement, where he was held from July 21 to August 10, 2000. "When I was taken in on July 21, the next day, I heard a story that some people die in the MVD, and I saw a person who had lost consciousness during interrogation. Even before that, I heard a lot of rumors about the basement...so I was very afraid to be there [and] I admitted easily to anything they accused me of.…"[740]

§ A relative of accused Hizb ut-Tahrir member Ulmasbek Khakimov, arrested on December 15, 1998, alleged that police kept him in the basement of the Ministry of Internal Affairs for a month and a half.[741] Police also kept his co-defendant, Danior Khojimetov, in the basement for the first month of pre-trial detention.[742]

           

Police routinely fail to notify families of religious detainees as to their relatives' whereabouts. And even when a family is notified of a detainee's whereabouts in custody or is told the identity of the arresting officers and is therefore able to deduce a detainee's whereabouts, police and procuracy authorities routinely deny anyone access to the detainee. In addition to being an abuse in itself, preventing relatives from seeing detainees in custody increases the risk of torture. It also impedes a family's efforts to arrange for legal counsel to protect the detainee's rights during the initial investigation period. In various cases described above in this report, detainees have endured weeks or months incommunicado: Shukhrat Abdurakhimov, five months; Mirzakarim Avazov, seven months; Imam Abdurakhim Abdurakhmonov, two months; Komoliddin Sattarov, three months; and Gairat Sabirov, five months.

§ A relative of accused Hizb ut-Tahrir member Tolkhon Riksiev told Human Rights Watch that police had held the twenty-nine-year-old incommunicado for six months during pre-trial detention. Officials failed even to officially notify his family of his arrest or his whereabouts in custody.[743]

§ In November 1999 a relative of Dilmurod Juraev who witnessed his arrest told Human Rights Watch, "He was arrested two months ago and I am still looking for him... They took him from home and planted drugs on him, after they found nothing in a search of our house."[744]

§ A relative of accused Hizb ut-Tahrir member Khikmat Rasulov recalled the family's difficulty in locating the young man following his January 12, 1999 arrest by armed soldiers and plainclothes officers from Tashkent police headquarters: "We tried to go to the MVD and called [the police], but they never answered. After two to three weeks, I saw him in Tashkent prison."[745]

The mother of one of Rasulov's co-defendants related police obfuscation at the time of her son's arrest. She said that when officers took him into custody on the night of February 20, 1999, they refused to show identification and said that they were simply taking him in for a few questions and would release him shortly. That night, his relatives went to their local police station and waited until 3:00 a.m., at which time officers said they would receive news at 5:00 a.m. At 5:00 a.m. the family was told that the young man had been taken to the Ministry of Internal Affairs. There, they were told to go to the Tashkent city police station. The officers at the Tashkent city police station told them to go back to Tashkent police headquarters. There, almost twenty-four hours after the young man's arrest, at 11:00 p.m., the authorities told the family to come back the next day. Finally, on February 23, 1999, police investigator Ilias Umarzakov of Tashkent police headquarters acknowledged that he had the young man in custody, and that he was under arrest and would not be released.[746]

§ In at least one case, the whereabouts of a man taken into custody presumably on charges related to his religious belief or affiliation were never confirmed. Bahodir Hasanov, thirty-eight years old at the time of his arrest, was a French language instructor at the Alliance Francaise in Tashkent. Although not particularly pious himself, he came from a family of observant and strongly independent Muslims.[747] Hasanov was reportedly taken by police from his home in Chirchik, just outside Tashkent, on July 17, 2000, and never seen or heard from again.[748] When "F.F." (not the person's true initials), a person close to Hasanov, inquired at the National Security Services (SNB) headquarters in Tashkent regarding Hasanov's whereabouts, an agency representative told him, "Find him yourself."[749]

§ The mother of one young man branded a "Wahhabi" and arrested by special forces officers in Andijan in 1998 reported that the SNB and then the MVD in Tashkent held him incommunicado for three months, the entire duration of his pre-trial detention. She told Human Rights Watch, "After his arrest...no one saw [him] at all. We were given no information and no visits with him. After three months, we heard from our neighbor that her son was also arrested and had told her that [my son] was in the basement of the SNB in Tashkent."[750] This did not resolve the problem, however: "At the SNB they refused to give us a visit with our son. After that, every month we went to Tashkent and were able to give him food and clothes, but we never got a meeting with him."[751]

§ Komil Masudov was arrested on July 26, 1999. Police held him incommunicado for three months while family members frantically searched for him at the district police station, city police station, police headquarters, and National Security Service.[752] Finally, a relative learned from the procuracy that he was being held at the Ministry of Internal Affairs in Tashkent and hired a lawyer for him.[753] The lawyer was able to visit Komil and his sister, Shoknoza Musaeva, who was already in prison. The lawyer informed the Masudov family that those in pre-trial detention were being beaten regularly.[754]

§ A female relative of one of seventeen accused "Wahhabis" arrested for taking private religion classes described the lengths to which police investigator Khojaev of the Ministry of Internal Affairs was prepared to go to deny family members their right to visit.[755] The Ministry of Internal Affairs held the young man in incommunicado custody for five months-the entire length of the preliminary investigation. During that time police compelled him to sign a self-incriminating statement. His wife was permitted to see him only after the investigation had finished. She told Human Rights Watch:

Later, I learned that I had the right to see my husband every month [once the investigation was finished] and so I called the investigator and told him that I had learned that I could see my husband. He asked who had told me that and I said 'a neighbor' and he let me go see my husband… Then the other neighbors [i.e. relatives of his co-defendants] found out about this and called the investigator, but he told them they were too late. Only [my husband] was visited twice.[756]

Sometimes police have refused to let relatives even provide food for the detainees in pre-trial custody, who otherwise are fed so little that their health is compromised.

§ Nakhmiddin Juvashev, convicted in 1999 for Hizb ut-Tahrir membership and then released on parole in August of that year, was re-arrested by police in August 2000. As of November 1, 2000, police had prevented all family members from visiting with Juvashev in custody and had allowed them to deliver food to the police station only three times. On October 31, Juvashev's wife took the last of the family's food to the Jizzakh province police station, where Juvashev was being held in the basement, but was told by guards that food could not be delivered to prisoners that day. Juvashev's wife described the incident: "I cried and explained that this was the last of our food, that my children were going hungry and I had brought the last of the food in the house to my husband, so the officer finally took it, but I don't know if he really gave it to my husband or not. The children have not eaten for two days now."[757]

The relative of another detainee told Human Rights Watch that courthouse guards demanded 5,000 som from family members to pass on food while defendants were on trial.[758]

Access to Legal Counsel and Preparation of a Defense

Although Uzbek law provides for access to legal counsel from the moment of arrest, throughout investigations police frequently pressure detainees not to seek counsel. When detainees or their families attempt to engage an independent defense lawyer, police and investigators often simply refuse requests from the lawyer for access to his or her client, until the police have secured a confession from the accused. Police frequently pressure detainees or their families to accept the services of state-appointed lawyers who do not defend their client's interests, and who are unlikely to lodge complaints against ill-treatment. Even when lawyers do gain access to clients, they do not have the right to freely arrange independent, objective forensic medical examinations that could provide evidence of torture.[759] 

Police and procuracy officials are particularly wary of giving detainees time with their attorneys. Even when a detainee is permitted contact with relatives, police often deny access to his legal counsel of choice. In some cases, the investigator in charge denies a lawyer entry, or the family is told that the detainee has rejected legal counsel.[760] Most often, access is simply delayed, through false statements about a detainee's whereabouts in custody, health, or the stage of the investigation, until police have conducted all interrogation sessions and coerced a confession from the detainee. Police thereby prevent the attorney from being involved during the most crucial period in the investigation. These actions deprive the detainee of protection crucial to both his legal defense and his protection from torture. Police have threatened family members and used other methods to coerce detainees to accept state-appointed legal counsel that often amounts only to "shadow counsel," that is, a signature on documents but no actual participation. Like all detainees in Uzbekistan, religious detainees are routinely denied their right to meet with legal counsel in private.      

§ Following the arrest of Imam Iuldashev on July 23, 2000, his family engaged attorney Irina Mikulina, who went directly to the Ministry of Internal Affairs to meet with her client. Officers reportedly told her he had been transferred to Tashkent prison.[761] Upon investigation, she found this to be false and returned to the Ministry of Internal Affairs, where she obtained unofficial confirmation that he was indeed being held there. As of August 2000, however, authorities had failed to issue any official notification of Iuldashev's arrest or place of detention,[762] and although his lawyer made repeated requests to see him, investigators refused to give her access.[763]  On or about August 9, investigators presented Mikulina with a document allegedly signed by Iuldashev, which stated that he rejected legal representation. Authorities forbade Mikulina to meet with her client to establish the authenticity of the document and confirm his choice not to be represented by legal counsel.[764] The imam's lawyer and relatives feared that Iuldashev had been physically coerced to reject a defense attorney.[765]

§ On Feruza Kurbanova's fifth day of detention on charges of membership in Hizb ut-Tahrir, officers from the Tashkent Municipal Police Department instructed her to hire a defense lawyer. When she told the authorities that she did not have enough money to hire a lawyer and requested that a state lawyer be appointed to her, an officer responded, "In cases like yours, we don't provide lawyers."[766] A state lawyer eventually attended some interrogation sessions, but the only legal advice he gave Kurbanova was that she sign blank pieces of paper as the investigators demanded.[767]

Kurbanova's trial began on February 28, 2001, in the absence of any legal counsel. According to Kurbanova, she was questioned in court by the judge, who also failed to provide her with legal representation.[768] At the second hearing, attended by Human Rights Watch as well as international media and diplomatic representatives, the judge began the trial again, as if the first hearing had never taken place. The judge read the charges against Kurbanova and repeatedly advised her of her right to an attorney, even announcing the delay of the proceeding until such time as a lawyer could be appointed and familiarized with the case.[769] The judge later attended Kurbanova's meeting with her state-appointed lawyer and instructed her to ask for forgiveness for her membership in Hizb ut-Tahrir.[770]

           

§ At his trial, one defendant accused of being a Wahhabi, Shukhrat Balikov, told the court that arresting officers denied his requests for a lawyer: "They said, 'Why do you want a lawyer? You'll die in prison anyway.'"[771]

§ At least five lawyers representing defendants in a group case spoke at trial about impediments to meeting with their clients. One attorney said:

Article 250 [of the criminal procedure code] says a lawyer can meet his defendant anytime in detention, but I was not allowed to have a separate meeting with my client. Most of [the defendants] met their lawyers only once or twice [and] in the company of police. Defendants were threatened that they shouldn't be honest about conditions.[772]

The attorney who represented Gafurjon Toirov and one other co-defendant in the same trial added:

Today, my new defendant was beaten and forced to reject his lawyer…It's no use to go and see defendants. They are so scared they can't say the truth and the lawyers can't help. Lawyers meet in the presence of investigators, and a defendant can't open his mouth. Even if there are ten lawyers, with today's existing regime, nothing will change.[773]

The attorney's words were remarkable given the pattern of intimidation against defense lawyers and general climate of fear generated by Uzbekistan's criminal justice system.

The attorney for another defendant in that case, Otabek Makhmudbekov, stated in court, "He was detained on January 27, but I was allowed to start the case only on April 24. I wrote a letter to the ministry and got no reply. My complaints against the investigator remain without reply."[774] Meanwhile, the lawyer for yet another defendant, Gairat Sabirov, complained that his client was denied access to legal counsel for two full months during detention.[775] According to a person close to Sabirov, "They only let our lawyer in to see him after [he] had signed [the confession]."[776] Defendant Khamidullo Rakhmatullaev's attorney told the judge: "On January 27, I took this case. I went to the pre-trial detention [facility] and couldn't talk to him. I went there for ten days [in a row]...then I sent a complaint to the senior procurator. The complaint was sent to the procurator's office. I received an answer that the defendant didn't want a lawyer, and later I learned that he was forced to reject me."[777] Judge Sharipov did not respond to the attorneys' complaints.

§ One woman whose son was arrested for membership in Hizb ut-Tahrir recounted her experience with police obfuscation:  "The investigator did not let our lawyer meet with my son…. No one met with my son for the whole five months [of pre-trial detention]. I was only able to meet with him after the trial. My son never met with his lawyer. The investigator said my son refused a lawyer, but it turns out my son didn't even know about the lawyer."[778]

In some cases, the procuracy did not inform detainees of the charges against them, a crucial element in preparing an adequate defense. That the procuracy sends cases to trial based on a defendant's self-incriminating statements even when the defendant is not aware of the charges further illustrates that confessions have been fabricated or coerced.

§ Accused Hizb ut-Tahrir member Abdilkhakim Shakasimov testified in court that police had never shown him the indictment against him.[779] Shakasimov also testified that officers held his arms and forced him to sign a self-incriminating statement. He said he was unsure of the contents of the statement and, in fact, could not even read or write in Uzbek, the language of the confession.[780]

§ A person familiar with the case of Bahodir Ikramov-detained on December 21, 1998, at a Tashkent university where he was pursuing a master's degree-said that authorities denied the young man access to the lawyer of his choice until the very last day of the police investigation. Ikramov expressed shock when on the last day of the investigation, after he had already signed a "confession" to narcotics possession, he was presented with the full charges against him for the first time. Ikramov was charged with membership in Hizb ut-Tahrir, illegal possession of narcotics, and encroachment on the constitutional order.[781]

Torture and Mistreatment in Pre-trial Detention

Widespread torture of detainees is common in criminal investigations in Uzbekistan.[782] In the campaign against independent Islam, police have systematically employed torture to coerce confessions and statements incriminating others.

In the past two years, the international community has taken notice of the pervasive and serious nature of torture in Uzbekistan and its use in the campaign against independent Islam. The United Nations Special Rapporteur on Torture visited the country in November 2002 and published a report characterizing torture in Uzbekistan as "systematic."[783]  The report also stated that "torture is being used in virtually all cases in which articles 156, 159, and 244 CC [of the Criminal Code] are invoked, in order to extract self-incriminating confessions and to punish those who are perceived by public authorities to be involved in either religious, or political, activities contrary to State interests (so-called security crimes)."[784] 

In its own review of Uzbekistan in June 2002, the United Nations Committee against Torture expressed concern about "numerous, ongoing and consistent" allegations of torture. It made a recommendation that was extraordinary compared to those usually made to state parties. It recommended that the authorities:  "Review cases of convictions based solely on confessions in the period since Uzbekistan became a party to the Convention, recognizing that many of these may have been based upon evidence obtained through torture or ill-treatment, and, as appropriate, provide prompt and impartial investigations and take appropriate remedial measures."[785]

The following section summarizes thirty-six cases of torture documented by Human Rights Watch, which represent only a fraction of the total number of cases Human Rights Watch has investigated. Several appeared in prior Human Rights Watch publications.[786] They describe a variety of methods of torture used against Muslim detainees, including beatings by fist and with truncheons or metal rods, rape and sexual violence, electric shock, use of lit cigarettes or newspapers to burn the detainee, and asphyxiation with plastic bags or gas masks.[787] They also reveal the role torture played in coercing testimony; judicial refusal to investigate victims' allegations; and the courts' routine practice of admitting as evidence testimony obtained under torture.[788] In twenty-seven of the thirty-six cases described below, detainees were tortured to compel them to give self-incriminating statements and were subsequently convicted. In four of the cases below, the torture of religious detainees led to their deaths. Human Rights Watch has documented a total of ten cases in which religious pre-trial detainees died as a direct result of torture between May 1998 and May 2003.[789]

Torture takes place in police precincts, provincial departments of the Ministry of Internal Affairs, and at the ministry building itself. It is also common in National Security Service facilities; in some cases, detainees are moved from facility to facility and tortured in each place.

Police and security agents torture independent Muslim suspects during the investigative phase to compel confessions or testimony against others. The interrogation of an independent Muslim generally centers on questions about the detainee's beliefs, affiliation with Islamic groups, or association with well-known independent imams. The end product the police are seeking is a statement-prepared by police, signed by the detainee-that describes the detainee's religious belief, practice, and affiliation rather than a criminal act. Because many of those detained on religion-related charges are held incommunicado, the interrogation may last up to six months.

Through torture and threats-on which we present details below-agents have coerced detainees to name members of religious organizations, people who have attended mosque with them, or even friends and neighbors who may not in fact have shared their religious beliefs or affiliation. They also have forced detainees to admit to associations with individuals unknown to them. Police then arrested those named, or brought them in as witnesses, often coercing them into testifying for the prosecution. This coercive strategy produces a perpetual flow of names for the police and security services to pursue. Police sometimes arrest a suspect and torture individuals unknown to him into testifying against him. The 1999 case of Bakhtior Musaev illustrates the latter strategy.       

The defense lawyer for Musaev, an accused Hizb ut-Tahrir member, wrote a letter of complaint to the Iunusabad District Court judge in charge of his client's case. In the letter the attorney drew particular attention to the fact that the witnesses against Musaev did not know him, had been instructed by police as to the content of their testimony, and had been tortured in order to compel that testimony. In his letter submitted to the judge prior to the June 1999 verdict against Musaev, attorney Shoknozar Jabrailov wrote:

During questioning [in court] on June 17, 1999, witness Sherev, Bekzot testified that he did not know Musaev at all before March 1999. He first saw Musaev at the city police station [GUVD] in Tashkent, when police officers forced him to give testimony, prepared beforehand, against Musaev saying that they knew each other and that he [Sherev] had seen him [Musaev] once in 1996; that Musaev supposedly had said that it would be good if there were an Islamic government in Uzbekistan. Officers at the Tashkent city police station tortured him in order to force him to give testimony against Musaev, they beat him, put a gas mask on him and cut the oxygen supply.[790]

Musaev's lawyer alleged that the police used threats of arrest to compel incriminating testimony from two additional witnesses. Both of these witnesses, when questioned in court, recanted their written statements.[791] Sherev testified in court about the pressure against the other two witnesses with him at the Tashkent police station. He said that all three had been given identical statements to sign and joint instructions by police as to how to testify and what to say.[792] Bakhtior Musaev was sentenced to nine years in prison.[793]

Torture Resulting in Death

§ Police from the Zangiota district of Tashkent detained Farhod Usmanov, son of well-known imam Nosir Usmanov, on June 14, 1999, for alleged possession of a Hizb ut-Tahrir leaflet.[794] Police reportedly placed Usmanov under formal arrest that same day and initially held him in the Zangiota district police station. After five days, authorities transferred him to a Tashkent police station, where he was held incommunicado for the rest of his detention-a matter of several days.[795] Investigator Kobil Khoitmetov was reportedly responsible for supervising Usmanov's case.[796] At 5:00 p.m. on June 25, authorities returned his body to his family with a death certificate attesting that the forty-two-year-old father of six had died in detention of heart failure the previous day.[797] Authorities who delivered Usmanov's body ordered the family to conceal his death and not to show his body to anyone.[798] However, that night a Human Rights Watch representative viewed the body, which was covered with large and small black bruises. The Usmanov family alleged that he had been in good health prior to police detention and charged that authorities had tortured him to death.[799]

Usmanov's family reported that authorities failed to prosecute those responsible for his death.[800] A letter from the Ministry of Internal Affairs to his family, sent in September 1999, stated simply that the criminal case against Usmanov had been closed upon the occasion of his demise.[801]

§ Police in Kashkadaria arrested Rustam Norbabaev,[802] born 1977, on March 13, 2000, for alleged membership in Hizb ut-Tahrir.[803] They detained Norbabaev along with his three brothers, Bahrom, Ergash, and Parda. All four men were allegedly tortured in the Yakkabaga district police department in Kashkadaria province. Rustam's three brothers were allegedly beaten to induce them to testify against him.[804] Rustam died after five days in custody-police claimed he hanged himself.[805] His three brothers were released immediately afterward.[806] The official investigation of his death did not consider possible police misconduct.

§ Hizb ut-Tahrir member Nu'mon Saidaminov died in police custody apparently from torture on September 8, 2000. When Saidaminov's body was washed in preparation for burial, an observer, "D.D." (not the person's true initials), reported that he was covered with dozens of open wounds and bruises, his fingernails were blackened, and there were puncture wounds on his fingers. He also had bruises around his eyes and a cut on the right side of his face. Bruises on his buttocks and anus suggested he may have been subjected to anal rape. The bottoms of his feet also showed markings consistent with a beating.[807] A doctor who reportedly observed the washing stated that the wounds were consistent with a fatal beating that had occurred at least two days earlier.[808]

§ On October 17, 2001, Tashkent police arrested brothers Ravshan and Rasul Haitov on suspicion of membership in Hizb ut-Tahrir. Officers took the men-ages thirty-two and twenty-five respectively-to the Sobir Rakhimov district police station where they beat and otherwise physically abused the Haitov brothers. Within hours, Ravshan Haitov was dead. Authorities returned his body to his family the next day.[809] Those who viewed the body reported that Haitov's neck was broken, as was one leg, below the knee. The upper section of his back was injured, and his body was covered with bruises. The official cause of death was given as a heart attack.[810]

In an unusual departure from a pattern of police impunity for abuse, four officers allegedly involved in the torture of Ravshan and Rasul Haitov were brought to trial and convicted on January 30, 2002. They were charged with "inflicting bodily harm that caused death," a violation of criminal code article 104. They were each sentenced to twenty years in prison. Observers noted that persons sentenced under criminal code article 104 had qualified for release under past prisoner amnesties. They expressed concern that the state had failed to charge the officers with murder, in order to provide for their future pardon and release.[811]

Rasul Haitov also suffered severe injury as a result of police abuse. He was transferred to a Tashkent hospital, where he was kept under guard in an intensive care unit. He was subsequently released and testified at the trial of the police who had beaten him and his brother. Charges against Rasul Haitov for alleged membership in Hizb ut-Tahrir were subsequently dropped.[812]

Torture in Ministry of Internal Affairs Custody

Human Rights Watch gathered information about Muslim detainees tortured in Ministry of Internal Affairs custody, including in the Ministry's own holding facility, the Tashkent Municipal Police holding facility, and various district police departments. Some of the worst cases of torture reported occurred in the first two locations. Officers from the Tashkent police headquarters (MVD) reportedly beat Imam Abduvahid Iuldashev repeatedly upon his arrest in February 1999. The officers took Iuldashev to room 190 in the station, where a man identified only as Abdukhamid began to insult him. Then, according to Iuldashev, "Another four men began to taunt me, then they forced me to take off my jacket and sat me in the corner. Then they beat me, twisting my arms behind my back; they forced me to the ground and struck my arms and legs, inflicting a great many bodily injuries."[813] An OSCE trial observer present on the last day of the proceedings against Iuldashev reported that the imam testified that police had beaten him in the interrogation room and also in the elevator and corridor of the police station.[814]

According to Iuldashev, after the round of beatings in room 190, officers took him to room 194, where they continued to beat him. The officers then called in two witnesses to observe their search of his pockets-a search that produced a substance later identified as opium.[815] When Iuldashev denied that the drugs were his and refused to sign the police report, police beat him again.[816] Authorities charged him with illegal possession of narcotics.

According to a person close to the case, when Iuldashev's lawyer met with him the next day, February 22, 1999, she saw that his body was covered with marks of beatings, including bruises on his chest.[817] After that meeting, authorities prohibited Iuldashev from meeting with his lawyer or family again until the investigation was over. During the following month his relatives were not even informed of the location where he was being held.[818] Later, persons close to the imam's case learned from him that he had been held first in the basement and then in a regular cell in the Ministry of Internal Affairs for a week before being transferred to the Tashkent Municipal Police Department. There, when authorities asked him upon arrival if he had any physical complaints, he answered, "Yes, I have been beaten."[819]  The Tashkent police officers took Iuldashev to a separate room where, instead of registering his complaint, a man began to beat him.[820] Throughout the attack, the officer demanded, "Did someone beat you? Do you have a complaint?" until Iuldashev agreed to sign a document saying that he had no complaint to make regarding physical mistreatment.[821]        

In his verdict convicting Iuldashev, Judge Kaiumov wrote: "The court refutes Iuldashev's version [of events]...that police officers brought physical pressure to bear on him."[822] The court further accused Iuldashev of having invented this "alibi" with the aim of avoiding punishment.[823] After Iuldashev's release under a presidential amnesty, police arrested him again in July 2000 and tortured him for three months in pre-trial detention.[824] Testifying at his trial, Iuldashev recalled more than two weeks of grueling torture at the hands of police who forced him to say he had weapons and to name the place where they were supposedly hidden. He recalled being confined in room number 18 in Tashkent police headquarters, "a horrible place," he said. He testified: "For almost eighteen days I was tortured there. The skin on my legs was burned, and my genitals were burned twice...They kept asking me about guns."[825] Iuldashev eventually complied with his torturers' demands, but was then shocked when officers threatened that if the weapons were not where he had said, they would continue to torture him and would also arrest and torture his relatives.[826] He claimed he pleaded with them, explaining he had only said these things because of the torture in the first place.

Iuldashev was taken to Minister of Internal Affairs Zokirjon Almatov himself, indicating the importance Uzbek authorities attached to his case. Iuldashev recalled at trial, "[Almatov]...asked me to tell the truth, and I explained that they tortured me and forced me to say I had guns that were not really there...[and] he said...'Tell us where your guns are.' I said, 'I have no guns.' He said, 'Once, you said there were guns.'"[827]

Imam Iuldashev testified that after his meeting with the minister, he was again tortured and was forced this time to say that the guns were in Kazakhstan. He gave an address where they were supposedly hidden, but a Kazakh police officer who was informed said there was no such address.[828] Nonetheless, the Uzbek officials then chastised the Ministry of Internal Affairs of Kazakhstan for failing to keep guns out of their country.[829] Iuldashev reported, "Then the assistant minister of internal affairs of the Republic of Kazakhstan wanted to talk to me, and they [Uzbek police] told me what to say to him. My face was swollen on the left side. They didn't want me to talk to him with my swollen face. They prepared the [written statement] and made up the questions and answers themselves. [So] I said that Tokhir Ibrahimov, who lives in Kazakstan, told me about guns and wanted to show me where they were, but we never met. This was [all] fabricated by police. These minutes were registered and given to the assistant minister of internal affairs of Kazakhstan."[830] In the end, state authorities did not charge Iuldashev with possession of weapons.[831]

Iuldashev's account also provides a possible explanation for a phenomenon that is typical in religious prosecutions in Uzbekistan: the frequent appearance in indictments and verdicts of only the first names of supposed accomplices. He testified: "...I was asked, 'Who were your followers in Fergana and Kokand?' I said, 'I have no such followers.' After they tortured me, I said that I did have staff. When they asked me who, I just said common Uzbek names like Akhmat...The next day, I couldn't remember the names and they kept changing. The torture was so bad. To avoid the torture, I just made up names."[832]

§ The experience of one of Iuldashev's co-defendants also sheds light on how police made their case against the imam. When asked in court whether or not he had been tortured to incriminate Iuldashev, this defendant, Ulugbek Vakhidov, said, "Yes." He explained that in addition to beating him the police showed him documents and computer files that were supposedly Iuldashev's own confessions:

They showed me a computer and on it, it said 'Testimony of Abduvahid Iuldashev.' It said that I was one of his students and that he taught us about jihad and that we collected money for the baitulmol fund. I was afraid I would be handicapped [from the torture], and I signed the document…I heard that if I didn't sign, I could be killed. I saw mattresses soaked with blood and, of course, I didn't want to die….[833]

           

The court sentenced Vakhidov to eight years in prison for membership in a criminal group and distribution of religious extremist literature.[834]

§ The mother of one religious prisoner told Human Rights Watch, "In Tashkent prison, during the investigation, they beat him so that he would confess. So long as he refused to confess, two large men beat him and threatened to rape him. He heard that they raped others. He finally confessed after the beatings. He confessed to possession of bullets and marijuana."[835] Her son was sentenced to seventeen years in prison.

§ Several defendants convicted in September 2000 on charges of religious extremism described being raped in Tashkent by officers and also with objects, including a bottle. Ma'rufkhoja Umarov stated that "they stripped me naked, and raped me several times. Then they sat me on the bottle, as a result of which I received several injuries."[836]  Five of his co-defendants also stated in court that they were raped during interrogation. One of the defendants was Dilshod Isakhov, who testified that police beat him in the basement, that they forced him onto the floor and hit him on the head with their truncheons until he lost consciousness. Later, the officers applied electric shock to him and then raped him.[837] 

§ Ulughbek Mirzoev, tried along with Muzafar Avazov and other accused Hizb ut-Tahrir members in 2001, also testified in court that he had been tortured. Mirzoev accused law enforcement officers of pulling out his fingernails.[838]

§ Describing injuries sustained as a result of police mistreatment in pre-trial detention, Khusan Maksudov, born 1952, testified in court, "I hear badly now, I have a scar in my left ear. I cannot lift my left arm or make sharp movements. I cannot lie on my right side, because my left kidney has been badly injured."[839]

§ "Can't anybody monitor the behavior of the police?" pleaded Tokhir Obidov, on trial for "Wahhabism" along with sixteen co-defendants in Tashkent City Court.[840] Obidov and many of his co-defendants and their lawyers gave the court details of the torture the men had suffered.[841] The attorney for co-defendant Gafurjon Toirov noted that a fellow defendant testified to seeing police beat Toirov and pull him by the hair.[842] According to the relative of one co-defendant, officers reserved their most brutal treatment for Toirov, beating him severely on the kidneys, in order to force him to sign a statement saying he had taught the others about Islam.[843] Toirov himself testified in court that he was tortured for more than two months in pre-trial detention. He said that officers beat him on the bottoms of his feet, and that the white clothes he had been wearing because he had just returned from a pilgrimage to Mecca were covered with blood.[844] While beating co-defendant Azgam Astankulov, police concentrated their blows on the young man's already injured kidneys, due to which, according to one source, Astankulov's "eyes popped and he immediately agreed to sign."[845]

Torture in National Security Service Custody

§ Officers from the SNB in Tashkent arrested Muzafar Avazov on January 17, 2000, for alleged membership in Hizb ut-Tahrir. According to Avazov's relative, "C.C." (not the person's true initials), the officers allegedly stuck metal spikes all around Avazov's head and tortured him with electric shock for two days in the basement at SNB headquarters. Then, during interrogation, officers threw him on the floor and called in two large men who jumped on him.[846] According to C.C., the officers ordered Avazov to sign a document that said that money found in his home was part of a Hizb ut-Tahrir fund for fighters in Chechnya, but he refused to sign. They told him that he should admit that the money was for IMU leader Tokhir Iuldash, but he again refused. Then, according to C.C., the officers tried to coerce him into saying that he had participated in a terrorist act in which a policeman was killed. He said, "Better that I die."[847] Then in July 2000, police arrested Avazov's younger brother and beat him in the elder's presence, again to coerce a self-incriminating statement.[848]

While the SNB otherwise held Avazov incommunicado during the six months of the criminal investigation, they summoned "C.C.," one of the young man's relatives, to meet with him after four months. According to C.C., "They finally let me see him so that I would advise him to give the testimony they wanted. I went, and he was swollen all over. His face was all swollen. He said the officers were from another region and were very cruel torturers. He said they hit him with truncheons. I opened his shirt, and on his chest there were bruises all over and marks that he had been beaten. There were bruises all over his legs as well."[849]

           

"C.C." was also present at Avazov's trial and said that Avazov recounted during the court hearing being tortured with electric shock but did not talk about the men who had attacked him.[850]  C.C. further reported that Avazov was left in a traumatized state, "When [he] stood to give testimony, he couldn't remember how old his children were."[851] The judge reportedly taunted Avazov, saying, "You didn't forget Allah, but you forgot your children."[852]

Muzafar Avazov was sent to Jaslyk prison, where authorities apparently tortured him to death. His body was returned to his family on August 8, 2002.[853]

§ A person close to Gairat Sabirov, a defendant in a case against seventeen so-called Wahhabis, alleged that the young man was kept in a "sauna" or wet-room in the SNB for three days after his arrest in January 2000. The source said that officers there burned Sobirov's body with lit cigarettes before stripping and raping him. "For what?" the source asked, "He was only reading the Koran."[854] On January 8, 2000, he was transferred to police custody, where, according to a second person familiar with Sabirov's case, police investigators threatened to rape his wife if he refused to sign a self-incriminating statement.[855] A third person close to the case provided Human Rights Watch with the details of Sabirov's torture in both SNB and police custody. According to that source, when Sabirov was transferred from the SNB to MVD custody on January 8, 2000, his new custodians also tortured him, putting cigarettes out on his arms.[856] A state lawyer appointed to represent Sabirov visited his family on January 10, to instruct them to provide medicine and a pair of dark pants-the white ones he had been wearing were now covered with blood.[857]

Sabirov was kept incommunicado for sixty-eight days. During that time other detainees saw him lying unconscious and bloody in the basement of the Tashkent Municipal Police Department.[858] Transferred to pre-trial detention in Tashkent prison in April 2000, Sabirov was examined by medical officers whose report stated that he had arrived covered with bruises.[859] A relative who met with him there reported, "We spoke on the phone through a window and guards walked to and fro. I asked if they tortured him and he just cried and said, 'The people who work here are not human.'"[860]  In court, the defense gave extensive details about the torture in custody of the seventeen defendants, but the judge was unimpressed. "Testimony that the defendants were tortured wasn't proven. There was no written proof, and they didn't know the name of their torturer, and we value their testimony as having no grounds," the judge said.[861]

§ SNB agents in Andijan tortured Tavakkaljon Akhmedov to compel him to admit to membership in Hizb ut-Tahrir and to name co-religionists. After succeeding in producing this testimony, agents continued to torture Akhmedov to compel him to admit to increasingly serious charges. Detained on May 15, 1999, he was held in the SNB basement where he was beaten, kicked, and hung by his wrists for seventeen days, until he confessed to Hizb ut-Tahrir membership.[862] Then, after he gave his confession, a whole new round of interrogation on additional charges began. SNB investigator Dilshod Akhmedov reportedly asked him "Will you confess or shall we continue with worse torture?" and threatened to cut off his tongue.[863] After that, Tavakkaljon admitted to the remainder of the charges the investigators had brought against him.[864] On or around July 27, he was transferred from the SNB basement to Andijan prison, where authorities continued to torture him.[865] According to family members, Akhmedov lost consciousness in Andijan prison and fell into a coma for three days.[866]

§ Another young man detained and interrogated by SNB officers in a province southwest of Tashkent told Human Rights Watch, "[the officer] took me to another room with no lights. He put me in a chair and ordered me to put my hands on the table and he beat me on my sides and all over. The major [presumably a senior SNB officer] was there, watching. Then [name of officer omitted] told me 'Write what I want or I'll put you in the basement and there I will teach you and by morning you will write what I want.'"[867]

§ The Supreme Court released Nakhmiddin Juvashev, convicted in 1999, on parole in August of that year. But the National Security Service rearrested him in August 2000, along with his nephew, and beat them both.[868] The nephew was subsequently released but Juvashev was kept in custody and abused again during five days of incommunicado detention. His lawyer, Erkin Juraev, saw Juvashev on August 10 in his basement cell in the Jizzakh district police station, where National Security Service officials eventually brought him. He reported that, "Juvashev's face and right eye were bruised and swollen. On his shoulder, blue-black marks were visible, and on other parts of his body there were traces of wounds. When I asked him about these wounds, he told me that five to six National Security Service officers had beaten him in investigator Erkin Sattarov's office and that they kicked him in the stomach and other places. He also said that they beat him with a black electrical cable from a typewriter."[869] When Juraev informed investigator Sattarov and Jizzakh province procurator Ottabaev about these incidents and other abuse and demanded a medical exam for Juvashev, they did not respond to his complaint in accordance with the law.[870] Juraev also pleaded for General Procurator Kodirov's help to put a stop to the torture.[871] No investigation was undertaken into the torture. The Jizzakh Province Court convicted Juvashev of anti-state activities and, on January 15, 2001, sentenced him to fourteen years in prison.

§ Victims of torture testified to the effectiveness of police abuse. The wife of a man arrested for taking private lessons on Islam told Human Rights Watch, "My husband said that they threatened to remove his teeth. Then they told him to sign. They beat him on the legs, wrapped his legs in newspaper and lit it. In two days he told them what they wanted to hear...They took him to Tashkent prison, [where authorities] refused to take him because he was in such bad shape. But the police left him there, so they had to take him."[872]

§ While President Karimov was promising pardons to independent Muslims who admitted having followed the "wrong" religious path, police actually tortured pious Muslim detainees to compel them to ask for pardons. The propaganda effort relied on the contrition of the accused to showcase the government's rectitude and generosity. Minister of Internal Affairs Zokirjon Almatov, claiming that dozens of people had applied to the police for the opportunity to repent, said, "No action has been taken against them, no punishment administered."[873] Just days after these declarations, another Ministry of Internal Affairs official, Maj. Fahriddin Islomov, announced that "...more than 700 young people who were led astray and joined various religious trends have come to the law-enforcement agencies to ask for forgiveness. None of them has been punished, they all have been forgiven and they have all returned to their families."[874] Several defendants, including Zafar Avasov and Ulmasbek Khakimov, who were part of a 1999 case against accused Hizb ut-Tahrir members, recounted in court the physical abuse inflicted on them by police to force them to apply for President Karimov's forgiveness.[875]

Threats of Torture

In addition to physical mistreatment, law enforcement officers also used a variety of threats to compel religious detainees to incriminate themselves and others. Twenty-five-year-old mother of four, Feruza Kurbanova, reported that arresting officers intimidated her with crude insults and threats of mistreatment. Kurbanova told Human Rights Watch that when officers arrested her on December 21, 2000, they took her to the Shaikhantaur district police station, where they "said the kinds of things a woman can't bear."[876] The officers asked her when she had last been with her husband and taunted that in Tashkent prison she would "have many husbands."[877] The officers threatened that if she did not confess to membership in Hizb ut-Tahrir, they would take her down to the basement of the police station and take turns raping her.[878] Kurbanova wrote the confession they demanded. The Shaikhantaur District Court found her guilty of membership in a banned religious organization and handed her a one-year suspended sentence.[879]

§ Police also threatened to arrest or physically mistreat detainees' relatives to compel the detainees to confess. During the interrogation of Shukhrat Abdurakhimov, police threatened to arrest the young man's wife and mother if he did not sign a self-incriminating statement.[880] An accused "Wahhabi," Khusan Maksudov, recalled in court that during his detention at the Ministry of Internal Affairs, "They said they would bring in my wife and rape her, and my children and torture them" if he did not sign self-incriminating statements.[881] Twenty-five-year-old Kakhramon Saidkhojaev, arrested for taking part in private Islamic classes and charged with anti-state activity, asked in court, "Why would I [incriminate] my relatives as Wahhabis...? I have nothing against them; I was tortured into saying that. I was told that unless I condemned them, I'd be killed. I'm telling the truth. I was scared... They said that if I didn't admit [to the charges], they'd bring my wife in and rape her in front of me."[882]

§ Detainees signed self-incriminating statements to stop the abuse of their relatives. On November 18, 1999, Tashkent police arrested Munavar Hasanov, whose son, Ismail Hasanov, had been arrested on charges of religious "extremism." They brought the elder Hasanov into the interrogation room to witness as his son was strung up by his ankles and repeatedly dropped on his head and beaten by officers.[883] Police told Munavar Hasanov that they could do anything they wanted with his son, even kill him, and no one would know.[884] Ismail Hasanov's father agreed to sign a confession to put an end to the torture.[885]  Police later brought Ismail before his father, who had also been beaten. They threatened to continue to beat the elder Hasanov unless Ismail signed a confession, which he did.[886] Neither man was released, instead both were convicted on trumped up charges and sent to prison.[887] Ismail Hasanov was sentenced to twenty-four years imprisonment on May 15, 2000.[888] Munavar was sentenced to three years of imprisonment on February 16, 2000.[889]

Judicial and Prosecutorial Indifference to Torture

The judiciary and the procuracy have legal obligations to protect detainees and defendants from torture. But in the overwhelming majority of cases, they failed to do so. Procurators fail to investigate diligently claims of torture filed by those detainees willing to risk speaking about the abuse. Indeed, it often takes the death of a detainee to prompt an investigation into torture. As noted in Chapter II, judges uniformly ignored defendants' court testimony about the torture they endured and admitted as evidence confessions and other testimony obtained through torture during the investigation.

The case of Nakhmiddin Juvashev, convicted on charges of Hizb ut-Tahrir membership, is an example of prosecutorial and judicial indifference to torture.[890] He was held first at the Jizzakh branch of the National Security Service and then in the basement of the Jizzakh city detention facility in February and March 1999. He was held incommunicado for almost two months, during which time he was repeatedly beaten.[891] In April 1999 his attorney wrote to the Jizzakh procuracy describing this treatment, but authorities failed to initiate an investigation. Instead, law enforcement agents tortured him in retaliation for making the complaint. After Juvashev's case was forwarded to the Jizzakh Province Court, his attorney filed a complaint to the presiding judge describing the torture. At trial the judge refused to mandate an investigation. Instead the judge ignored Juvashev's court testimony about the torture, admitted into evidence self-incriminating statements he had given while being tortured, and sentenced him to nine years in prison on the basis of these statements.

Juvashev's ordeal, detailed in these complaints, follows: on March 13, 1999, National Security Service investigator Shavkat Iakshiev took Juvashev to the Ministry of Internal Affairs in Tashkent. There, investigator Iakshiev, officers Bahodir Kurbanov and Rustam Mustafakulov, an officer named Abdulkhamid, and several other unidentified men took Juvashev down to the basement, fastened his wrists in handcuffs, and kicked him and beat him with their nightsticks for nine hours. They then insisted he write whatever they instructed.[892] "My legs and body became swollen. I lost consciousness several times," Juvashev recalled.[893] Juvashev was transferred to a detention facility in Uchtepa, where he was held from March 16 to April 6. There, a Ministry of Internal Affairs anti-corruption officer named Farkhod and another man beat and insulted him in an upper-floor room during three to four days.[894] In addition, Juvashev reported that every day he was visited by officer Bahodir Kurbanov from the anti-corruption department, who took him outside, tormented and insulted him, and beat him on the head with a truncheon.[895] According to Juvashev, Kurbanov threatened, "I am going to subject you to such torture that you will do everything they demand, and then you will die."[896]

Authorities at the Uchtepa detention facility wrote a report registering Juvashev's condition and allegedly acknowledging that he had been beaten.[897] The day after his arrival at Uchtepa, presumably March 17, Juvashev was having trouble breathing; his condition was so dire that officers were forced to call an ambulance to give him emergency assistance.[898]

Juvashev reported that investigator Iakshiev instructed him to reject his lawyer, but that he managed to get a one-time visit-after almost two months in custody-by promising to fire his lawyer immediately afterwards.[899] Juvashev's first words to his attorney, M. Togaev, were about the torture he had endured, signs of which were visible, including swollen legs.[900]

Togaev's April 17, 1999 complaint to the Jizzakh procurator named the several officers who tortured his client and demanded a medical exam and an investigation.[901] Juvashev has stated that the procurator's first deputy, R. Tashkulov, visited him in detention, discussed his allegations with him, and obtained a full description of events.[902]

Juvashev's abusers responded by stripping Juvashev down to his underwear, handcuffing him, hanging him from an elevated, horizontal bar, and beating him for more than three hours with truncheons.[903] "With the aid of this kind of torture, humiliation and threat, Shavkat Iakshiev forced me to write a dictated letter stating that I supposedly broke my leg and received a massive number of bruises on my body from falling off the second tier bunk, and not from their having beaten me," Juvashev alleged.[904] But Juvashev persisted in attempts to hold his abusers accountable. On April 23, 1999, he wrote a complaint about the torture he had endured and the many blackouts and injuries he had suffered as a result.[905] According to a person close to the case, the deputy procurator of Jizzakh, Shamsilulov, allegedly responded to his complaint in a letter that said, "No one beat you and you should reject your lawyer."[906]

Juvashev was still in the hands of his torturers, and again they responded to his complaint with more violence, beating him on the bottoms of his feet in particular. By April 27 Juvashev had signed another statement prepared by police, to the effect that no one had beaten him and that he waived his right to an attorney.[907] For three days afterward, according to someone who talked with him later, he could not so much as lift his head.[908]

At his trial in the Jizzakh Province Court in July, Juvashev denounced the "severe and relentless" torture he had suffered,[909] but Judge Norkhujaev sentenced him to nine years in prison on the basis of his self-incriminating statements.

Juvashev was subsequently released on three years of parole. But on August 5, 2000, he was again arrested and physically mistreated by police. He was tried and sentenced on January 15, 2001, to fourteen years of imprisonment on charges of attempting to overthrow the government.

Another case, heard in the Tashkent City Court in 2000, also demonstrates judicial indifference to torture. Danior Sodykov testified in court that police had beaten and raped him to coerce him into signing a confession to membership in Hizb ut-Tahrir. Tashkent City Court Judge Rakhmonov responded by asking him if he had complained to anyone about the mistreatment, putting the onus of stopping his torture on Sodykov, the victim.[910] Sodykov replied, "I could not even tell the officers beating me to stop, how could I write a complaint? To whom could I complain?"[911] No investigation ensued.

Independent Muslim defendants in one 2002 group case alleged that Tashkent police had tortured them with electric shock, beatings, and suffocation with plastic bags and gas masks. When defendant Iskander Khudoiberganov was describing torture marks that he saw on one of his co-defendants, Judge Nizamiddin Rustamov responded by saying that the Ministry of Internal Affairs, where the torture allegedly occurred, "is not a holiday resort."[912]

A judge in a June and July 2003 trial of fifteen alleged Hizb ut-Tahrir members did not respond at all to defendants' harrowing court testimony about the torture they had endured during the investigation. On June 10 one defendant, Ikrom Norkhojaev, stated in court:

They put handcuffs on me. They made me lie down on the floor in the basement. They beat me on the soles of my feet. They also used a wooden stick to beat me. I couldn't walk-I had to crawl to the interrogation room.… Only God knows about the other things that happened. I am too ashamed to talk about it.[913]

Khikmat Buriev gave similar testimony on June 11: "They tortured me a lot. They put a gas mask on me and beat me on the soles of my feet. Ask the other guys as well-they even raped us.… The investigator forced me to sign a statement that was already written."[914] According to a person who attended the trial, the judge did not even question these defendants about their allegations.[915] During the two and a half hours it took the judge to read the verdict, his only reference to these testimonies was that Buriev had claimed that he had been pressured to sign statements.[916]

           

Tashkent courtroom.  

© 2003 Jason Eskenazi

Trials and Sentencing

Defendants generally have only a slim chance for a fair trial in Uzbekistan. Defendants charged with religion-related violations face additional problems and obstacles to obtaining due process during the trial phase. The country's judiciary is not independent of the executive.[917] The procurator-investigator and prosecutor of a case-holds the balance of power in a courtroom. Judges display marked deference toward and bias in favor of procurators. They approach defendants with hostility and suspicion rather than presumption of innocence. Corruption in the judiciary is rampant.[918]

In trials of independent Muslims, defendants are denied the right to examine witnesses against them.[919] An aggressive defense is the rare exception that proves the rule: defense counsel is sidelined, fearful, and passive. Defendants themselves must stick to the "script" of confession and contrition or else they are silenced. Judges routinely ignore or inadequately address court testimony regarding fabrication of evidence and coercive methods-including torture-used to procure defendants' testimony to police.

In Uzbekistan court cases are presided over by a professional judge and two assessors. Called "people's judges" during the Soviet system, lay assessors are private citizens who attend hearings and can question defendants and witnesses, but who are most often passive. Many lay assessors at trials observed by Human Rights Watch slept through significant portions of the hearings.

The procurator-who has supervised the investigation of the case and then prosecutes the case at trial-clearly has more power in the courtroom than the defense. In dozens of trials monitored by Human Rights Watch, judges consistently deferred to procurators on technical and material questions. Procurators have the right to appeal cases when they are not satisfied with the verdict or the length of the prison sentence.[920] Having one's decisions appealed and overturned or altered can damage a judge's career. A 1999 U.S. Department of Justice report on Uzbekistan's judiciary states, "In some cases the court may impose a heavy sentence to avoid an appeal from the procurator. It is said that if a procurator appeals a judge three or more times, that judge's career is virtually over."[921]          

In Uzbekistan (as in many countries of the former Soviet Union) trials almost always result in convictions. In trials of independent Muslims, a guilty verdict is virtually a foregone conclusion, as judges fall in line with the country's strict laws on religion.[922] With rare exception, conviction of the accused is inevitable. Human Rights Watch is aware of one independent Muslim having been acquitted. While judges can use discretion in determining sentences, they uniformly follow the lead of the procuracy's requests for prison terms. In earlier periods of the campaign, particularly after the 1999 bombings in Tashkent, sentences typically were from twelve to twenty years of imprisonment. In 2003 sentences were typically from eight to ten years of imprisonment.

Denial of the Right to Examine Witnesses         

In trials of independent Muslims, courts routinely violate defendants' right to examine prosecution witnesses. A principal form of incriminating evidence was "confessions" obtained from defendants and prosecution witnesses-many themselves independent Muslim prisoners-often under torture or other forms of coercion. If such witnesses had appeared in court personally, the defense could have questioned them, including about the circumstances under which they made their testimony to law enforcement or security agents. But the prosecution routinely relied on what it claimed were written statements made by convicted persons incriminating the defendants on trial. In a few cases, the person whose written testimony was used in a case had been executed before the trial began. Other state witnesses were detainees simultaneously facing criminal charges in separate cases and were vulnerable to coercion. There is evidence that police and security agents coerced false statements from detainees who were forced to stand witness in trials of people they did not know.[923]

Confessions and third person testimony form a critical element in cases against independent Muslims because in the majority of cases they are prosecuted in groups[924] consisting of unrelated defendants whom police compelled to testify against each other.[925] Prosecutors often argued their case against only one or two main defendants accused of leading anti-constitutional religious activity. They often failed even to identify criminal acts allegedly committed by other co-defendants. These remaining defendants were prosecuted mainly on the basis of allegations that they were connected to or affiliated with the principal defendants. This method of prosecution suggests an urgency to produce convictions and to move large numbers of detainees through the judicial system. It also permits prosecutors to focus on one main defendant, coerce other defendants into accusing him of serious crimes, and then, on the basis of coerced testimony, accuse those secondary defendants of association with him and with failing to inform the authorities of his illegal activities.[926]

Witness testimony is also crucial because the prosecution rarely has any other evidence to make the case that independent Muslims' actions could have amounted to an attempt to overthrow the government, the most common charge against them. Criticizing the prosecution, the attorney for accused "Wahhabi" Murod Kosymov-one of seventeen co-defendants-noted the vagueness of the charges, the lack of supporting details provided by the accusers. "You turn the pages of the indictment and you can see they've been accused of all these articles, but there is nothing saying when and where they committed these crimes, when and where they planned to overthrow the constitution."[927]  Noting the absence of any witnesses for the prosecution or other evidence to prove his client guilty, the attorney for accused Hizb ut-Tahrir member Bakhtior Usmanov stated in court, "The procurator's words alone are not enough; there should be facts also."[928]

As described above, prosecutors relied heavily on evidence planted by police. Rarely was the defense able to question those who had vouched for that evidence, because in most cases the expert opinions of narcotics or ballistics and weapons experts were provided to the court in written form only, and in many cases were the only evidence presented at trial. In other cases, testimony from state witnesses whom police had brought along on the searches was the only certification offered to substantiate charges.

Defense often cannot examine witnesses from the state Committee on Religious Affairs, which, as noted in "Institutions of Control," provides "expert testimony" that routinely serves as a crucial basis for convictions. In his court testimony, Hafizulla Nosirov, the reputed leader of Hizb ut-Tahrir in Uzbekistan, argued that the right to confront his "expert" accuser was essential. He offered the judge the following critique of the state's experts: "In my first speech I told you about the contact I had with the Committee on Religious Affairs under the Cabinet of Ministers. From that communication, I conclude that the experts they have used to assess our leaflets don't know anything, and they avoid my questions. I request the invitation of religious experts into the courtroom to further discuss [the leaflets]. Let him [the expert] substantiate what he thinks we are doing wrong, here in the courtroom."[929] After consulting with the procurator, the judge declined Nosirov's request.

A Tashkent judge presiding over a trial against fifteen members of Hizb ut-Tahrir held in June and July 2003 also declined without explanation the defense's request to examine the Committee on Religious Affairs expert. [930]

Other Procedural Violations at Trial

Questions posed by judges suggested they had predetermined the trial outcomes, in violation of the principle of the presumption of innocence.[931] Presiding over a case of twelve accused Hizb ut-Tahrir members in May 1999, Judge Mansrur Akhmadjonov of the Tashkent City Court turned to one defendant during the young man's testimony and asked, "How old is your daughter?" When the man replied that his daughter was still a young child, the judge reportedly told him, "By the time you get out of prison, she'll be grown up and married."[932] In another case, when Judge Akhmadjonov presided over a trial of nine alleged Hizb ut-Tahrir members, a person who had been in the courtroom recalled: "On the first day of trial, the judge threatened the defendants that he would send them to Jaslyk [prison, the harshest in Uzbekistan]."[933] The lawyer for the defense protested, and the defendants themselves reportedly refused to speak following the judge's outburst. Judge Akhmadjonov allegedly retaliated by moving the trial to Tashkent prison and blocking entry to the defendants' relatives.[934]

Also, as noted in "Torture and Mistreatment in Pre-trial Detention," judges often disregard evidence of torture or other illegal police conduct. The following example is illustrative. Judge Sharipov of the Tashkent City Court, who sentenced seventeen defendants for "Wahhabism" in August 2000, considered their recantation of earlier self-incriminating statements "an attempt to avoid punishment."[935] According to a relative of Gairat Sabirov (one of the defendants in that case), when Sabirov testified that police had held him in solitary confinement, burned him with cigarettes, and raped him, the judge continuously interrupted his testimony.[936] Rights defender Mikhail Ardzinov, who observed the trial, recalled that "the defense attorneys demonstrated the insufficiency of the evidence against the defendants and the weakness of the state's arguments...but the judge ignored them completely."[937]

Judges often make comments that are inappropriate, though not in violation of the right to a fair trial. At times, the judges' statements rise to the level of degrading treatment of defendants.[938] For example, a lay assessor in the Tashkent City Court trial against thirteen Hizb ut-Tahrir members asked a defendant "Are you faithful to your oath [to Hizb ut-Tahrir] or did you change your mind? Remember, you have two children."[939] When the defendant explained to the lay judge that his oath had been a vow to be faithful to religion, the presiding judge accused him of being against the constitution and queried, "With what in the Uzbek republic are you not satisfied? This country gave you an education, food, etc. Why are you not satisfied?" He later added, "Your parents are here, are you not ashamed? Don't you feel ashamed? Don't you feel ashamed?"[940] In response to a question from the presiding judge, Rakhmonov, also about asking for forgiveness, co-defendant Hikmat Rasulov sounded exasperated: "No one has said anything here about the six months of torture, and now you are demanding that we apologize...!"[941]

Judges' improper pronouncements extended to the correctness or error of certain religious beliefs or practices. In the trial of accused Hizb ut-Tahrir member Feruza Kurbanova, Judge Mirzahidov said to her, "You became a member and gave an oath. If you really believe in God, you shouldn't take oaths."[942] One woman described to Human Rights Watch how the judge presiding at her son's trial regarded her own religious practice as evidence of her son's guilt: "When I went to the trial, the judge [pointing at my headscarf] said to my son, 'You are no good. If you were, then your mother wouldn't wear that.'"[943] Then the judge reportedly turned to the woman and said, "The state doesn't allow this. You should dress in European style..."[944]

Effect: Sidelining the Defense

The obstacles to establishing innocence are often so daunting that most defense attorneys give up long before they have begun. The defense is given little time to speak at trial. Defense attorneys are intimidated and threatened.[945] Fear of retribution has led lawyers to refuse to take on the cases of independent Muslims and affects the quality of their defense.[946] State-appointed attorneys, often the only counsel available to defendants in trials of independent Muslims, do not always act in the interests of their clients and regularly offer weak defense arguments. By and large, statements by defense counsel amount to little more than pleas for leniency in sentencing and rarely include a challenge to the charges against the defendants. Defense attorneys often fail to call witnesses for the defense and when they do, they have found themselves without the backing of the judge and police necessary to compel a witness to appear in court. Material evidence is often not presented in court, and the defense cannot summon independent experts to challenge opinions (almost always written) by government forensic, narcotics, or religion experts.

Defendants, for their part, are literally relegated to the sidelines during the process-they are kept in barred cages on one side of the courtroom and are given only limited time to speak. The part of the trial allotted to the defendant often includes an initial statement as to whether or not he or she acknowledges the charges against him/her and confirms the confessions he or she has made during the pre-trial investigation. Following the procurator's presentation of the charges, defendants are asked to give an oral statement outlining their crimes. When defendants digress from the "script" by pleading innocence, complaining of torture or coercion by police, or making other statements frowned upon by the court, they are often interrupted and silenced. After the procurator has made closing arguments and asked for specific sentences for those on trial, the accused are allowed to give what is called their "last word." This is the time, typically, for the defendants to express their contrition for their wrongdoing and ask for the forgiveness of the state and leniency of the court. While there were some indications that a failure to ask for forgiveness during this speech led to more severe sentences than were given to contrite defendants, in the vast majority of cases defendant statements appeared to fail to influence the judge's final decision.

           

Sentencing

Independent Muslims face lengthy and harsh sentences. Judges show little independence in determining sentences, condemning men to roughly the number of years in prison demanded by the procurator and very rarely finding against the state.

As noted earlier, the Russian rights group Memorial documented 2,297 cases of political and religious prisoners (1,967 of whom were not charged with acts of violence). Out of the 2,297 people arrested, Memorial succeeded in obtaining detailed information on the sentences of 1,649. The group's October 2001 report on the subject states that the majority, 1,002 people, were sentenced to strict-regime prisons. Another 515 people, convicted on charges related to their politics or religion, were sent to general-regime facilities, and thirty-four were sent to the country's "prison-regime" facility-the strictest form of incarceration. Fifty-one people received sentences that did not involve prison time. One person was acquitted.[947]

Appeal

Unjust verdicts have seldom been redressed on appeal. Appeals courts have reduced sentences in some cases, but in general they have maintained the verdicts of the lower courts; so fifteen years may be reduced to twelve, but the underlying police methods and indicting arguments are not challenged. Indeed, fear that the appeals court would actually increase the lower court's penalty has often kept defendants and their families from launching an appeal. Moreover, conditions in pre-trial detention have been so harsh that some convicted religious prisoners have forgone their right to appeal in the interest of reaching what they believed would be the relative safety of a post-conviction facility.

Transparency: Corruption and Access to Trials

Although the majority of trials are officially open to the public, in practice, family members of the accused face a series of obstacles when trying to gain access to the court. Authorities often fail to notify family members that their relative's case has been sent to trial. Many therefore do not learn that the hearings have begun until well into the proceedings, and sometimes not until the trial is over. Because court clerks typically refuse to provide information about the time that a case will be heard, relatives end up waiting outside the courthouse for a trial to start for days or weeks on end. Authorities at courthouses sometimes lie to relatives about the timing of a case, in order to get them to leave and to allow proceedings to go on without observers. In what appears to be a trend at trials of independent Muslims, court authorities often limit access to the hearings to one relative of each defendant. Anxiety becomes acute as families are forced to decide in a matter of seconds whether a defendant's husband, wife, mother, father, brother, sister or other relative will be the one to attend the trial, and perhaps see him or her for the last time outside of prison. Guards physically prevent those without permission from attending court hearings, again, even for "open" proceedings.

The denial of access appeared at times to be yet another discriminatory element of the cases against independent Muslims. For instance, the judge presiding over Uigun and Oibek Ruzmetov's trial allegedly denied their mother, Darmon Sultanova, access and told her that "Wahhabists" are not authorized to attend trials.[948]

Other times, courthouse guards or other authorities of the court demand bribes in exchange for permission to attend the proceedings. One female relative of independent Muslim prisoner Tavakkaljon Akhmedov reported that courthouse guards demanded bribes from family members who wanted to attend his trial: "We paid to attend the trial. We put one packet of cigarettes and some money in our passports [when we handed them to the guards]."[949] Later, during this trial, co-defendant Nematullo Bobokhonov testified that today's society in Uzbekistan is marred by corruption and prostitution. "When the judge asked Bobokhonov for proof of corruption, no one spoke up, even though we had all paid a bribe to be there," said an observer. During the lunch break, police allegedly took Bobokhonov back to the prison transport truck and beat him "to the point where his pulse stopped." After the break, persons in the court noted Bobokhonov's poor condition: "We saw with our own eyes that Bobokhonov was bent over and in bad shape. The judge laughed at him and said, 'Oh, you must have eaten something bad,'" said one eyewitness.[950] One relative told Human Rights Watch: "On the day of the verdict, I [Akhmedov's wife] asked for a meeting for my children with my husband. I gave the police 700 som, all that I had, but they said they would only do it for more and refused."[951]

A relative of one of seventeen alleged Wahhabis reported that she and other family members were compelled to pay 5,000 som each to guards outside the courtroom for permission to give the defendants food. "To see a man for just two minutes," she said, "costs 3,000 som."[952]

Many of the relatives of thirteen men tried by the Tashkent City Court for Hizb ut-Tahrir membership in June and July 1999 told Human Rights Watch that they had been compelled to pay to attend the proceedings. One defendant's relative recalled, "I got a call from the clerk of the court, who said I needed to pay the lawyer in order to sit in the courtroom. This was Bahrom, the secretary. 'We paid already,' we said, but he said, 'You paid for the investigator; now you pay to go to the court.' If you don't pay, they don't allow you in."[953]

Priority access is given to plainclothes security agents who sit in the courtroom. Foreign observers, including diplomats, journalists, and representatives of international rights groups are given access on a secondary and uneven basis. Access for these groups has been repeatedly denied under a variety of pretexts, from lack of space in the courtroom, to a requirement for special permission from the Ministry of Foreign Affairs or Ministry of Justice to attend a specific trial. More often, particularly in the earlier years of the campaign, guards and court house officials lie to international observers who arrive to monitor a trial, telling them that the proceeding has been cancelled when in fact it has not or giving foreigners a false time as the start of the hearing-and later denying the person entry because he or she is "too late." Judges have also denied access to international observers-either through a message delivered by proxy or a direct in-person refusal, often accompanied by a story regarding scheduling delays or an instruction to return with permission from the Ministry of Foreign Affairs to attend the trial.

Despite frequent difficulties gaining access to courts, Human Rights Watch representatives attended dozens of trials of religious Muslims in provinces throughout Uzbekistan.

Treatment in Prison

I heard the prisoners screaming, and the workers at the prison told me, 'They [the prisoners] are enemies of the state and that's why they're treated so harshly.'

-Female relative of a religious prisoner.[954]

Regardless of the reason for their incarceration, all inmates in Uzbekistan suffer from harsh, overcrowded, and unhygienic conditions in the Uzbek prison system.[955] Prison authorities commonly beat inmates and fail to address their basic medical and nutritional needs through corruption or neglect. Diseases, particularly tuberculosis, are rampant and often go untreated. These conditions jeopardize prisoners' health and life. [956]

Independent Muslims suffer acutely from these abuses. They are also singled out for special punishment, including physical and psychological mistreatment, by prison authorities.[957] This section documents human rights violations against these prisoners. Some of the violations are common to the general prison population-the authorities' failure to inform families of their relatives' whereabouts in custody, the theft of food and medicine packages. Other violations, physical abuse in particular, are common but perpetrated against Muslim prisoners in retribution for their religious status, religious expression, adherence to religious practices, or their refusal to disavow their alleged "extremist" affiliations. In nine cases that Human Rights Watch documented, the torture of independent Muslim prisoners resulted in their deaths.[958] The following section of this chapter also focuses attention on the atrocious conditions in Jaslyk prison, which is believed to have been constructed in 1998 with the specific purpose of holding prisoners convicted on religion-related charges.

Background

Uzbekistan's prison system is under the jurisdiction of the Ministry of Internal Affairs and is administered by the ministry's Main Administration for the Execution of Punishments. According to the ministry, there are thirty-five facilities in the country, including five general-regime facilities, ten strict-regime, and another facility designated as a "special" regime prison.[959] The ministry runs a separate facility for female inmates, as well as separate prisons for minors and persons diagnosed with tuberculosis.[960]

Despite the Ministry of Internal Affairs' assertions to the contrary, the country's prisons are reportedly grossly overcrowded, exacerbating the already abysmal conditions.[961] Human Rights Watch has consistently received reports throughout the past four years that prisoners were forced to sleep "in turns" due to a lack of beds and that some men were forced to sleep on the floor when prison officials filled cells beyond capacity.[962] One prisoner held in Kiziltepa told Human Rights Watch that he had to sleep on the floor along with many others during his incarceration there in 2000.[963] Another prisoner, held in the Zangiota facility, reported that he was held in a separate wing of the prison, along with more than one hundred other religious prisoners. He said that he regularly had to sleep on the floor because of overcrowding. He reported, however, that prison guards kept fewer men to a cell during the winter, because the floor was so cold.[964] The problems associated with overcrowding were widely believed to be the primary motivation for semi-regular presidential amnesty decrees providing for the release of certain categories of prisoners.[965]

Generally poor conditions appeared to contribute to desperation on the part of prisoners. During a single month in 2002, as many as eight prisoners incarcerated in prison number 64/51, in Kashkadaria province, reportedly attempted to commit suicide by slitting their wrists with razor blades.[966] Two other prisoners at the facility made unsuccessful attempts to hang themselves, while another man threw himself from a third-story height, allegedly out of desperation due to hunger.[967]

Deaths Attributed to Ill-Treatment and Disease

The combination of unhygienic conditions, malnutrition, and lack of medicine and medical attention, has led to serious problems of disease and illness in Uzbekistan's prisons, sometimes resulting in death. According to one U.S. State Department report on Uzbekistan, "Tuberculosis and hepatitis are epidemic in the prisons, making even short periods of incarceration potentially deadly."[968] The absence of official government statistics on the subject makes it difficult to determine how many deaths of prisoners each year are due to tuberculosis; however, from scattered reports it appeared a common cause of death.

Prison officials frequently beat prisoners and subject them to ill-treatment by such actions as stealing food and medicine hand-delivered by prisoners' relatives,[969] and placing them in cells with freezing temperatures without adequate clothing. Such treatment weakens prisoners' health and can lead to or compound illness, which sometimes ends with the prisoner's death. In such a case, the official cause of death is routinely given as "tuberculosis," "sclerosis of the liver," or "septic endocarditis."[970] Authorities, however, ignored aggravating factors of ill-treatment when determining the cause of death. Human Rights Watch documented thirteen cases involving the deaths of independent Muslims that occurred between November 2001 and March 2003, in which the ill prisoner's death was preceded by physical mistreatment, denial of medical treatment, and withholding of food parcels.[971]

Contact with the Outside World and Withholding Information regarding Prisoners' Whereabouts

Prisoners are often deprived regular contact with the outside world.[972] Sanctioned visits by relatives are generally rare-sometimes limited to one visit every six months or every three months, depending on the severity of the crime of which the person was convicted. Communications to the outside world, including letters from prisoners to their families, is highly restricted. The relative of one religious prisoner, for example, learned during a visit with her son at Zangiota prison that none of the letters she had sent had reached him and that he too had sent her letters that were never delivered.[973]

Many religious prisoners were deprived contact with family for months at a time because their relatives did not know where they were incarcerated. Ministry of Internal Affairs officials responsible for tracking prisoners frequently withheld this information for two to three months or longer. Shukhrat Parpiev, for example, was missing in custody for seven months and Abdurashid Isakhojaev's whereabouts were unknown for five months.[974] The denial of information on prisoner whereabouts hindered family efforts to provide food, medicine, and other assistance to prisoners. It also increased the prisoners' psychological isolation and made prisoners more vulnerable to torture and ill-treatment.

§ The parents of Abdurashid Isakhojaev were permitted one meeting with him at Tavaksai prison in February 1999, after he was convicted of participating in a "Wahhabi trend." It was their first visit with him since his June 1998 arrest. When his brother returned to the prison in June 1999 to bring food, he was told Isakhojaev was no longer there. Family members describe a search that lasted five months, and took them from one prison and government office to another. First, a relative was told at Zangiota prison, in Tashkent province, that Isakhojaev was indeed there but could not receive food or visitors due to a quarantine. Returning to Zangiota ten days later, relatives were told that he was not there. At the office of Rakzhab Kodirov, the deputy minister of internal affairs and head of the Main Administration for the Execution of Punishments, they were told that Isakhojaev was certainly somewhere in the Tashkent province but that the office did not possess details. When Isakhojaev's father demanded proof that his son was alive, officials at the deputy minister's office assured him that they had spoken with him and that he was alive and healthy, but they refused to say where he was. The family wrote to that office every week. Finally, in November 1999, a year after his conviction, the family was informed that Isakhojaev was being held in Tavaksai prison. Guards at that facility confirmed that he was being held there and initially told relatives they could come back to leave food for the prisoner. After his father had waited half a day outside the prison with food, officials told him that his son was not there after all, but was in Zangiota. Officials at Zangiota denied having him. Back at Kodirov's office, the relatives were told to try again in a week. When Isakhojaev's father went back to the office, he found a gathering of relatives of men whose whereabouts in custody were unknown. Then officials read out a list of prisoners sent to Jaslyk, which included Isakhojaev's name, and the elder Isakhojaev returned home with a letter from his son, sent from that harsh desert prison.[975]

§ Authorities transferred Shukhrat Abdurakhimov to an unknown location after his trial. Speaking to Human Rights Watch during this period, his mother said, "I cry day and night, I just want to know where he is."[976] Abdurakhimov's mother reported that when she appealed to the office of Ombudswoman Sayora Rashidova for help in locating her son, she was refused an audience and sent to the procuracy, where officials also refused to help her.[977] The family searched for three months before learning that Abdurakhimov was being held in Zangiota prison.

§ The mother of a young man convicted on charges related to his alleged "Wahhabism" reported a similar ordeal. "[H]e had been in Tashkent prison, but when I went there for a visit, they said he'd been sent to the MVD...A month later, we returned to Tashkent prison, and then they said they had sent him to Zangiota, and we went there and they said that he was not there. Then I went to Tashkent prison, but no one would tell me where he was or how to find out. For a full year we looked for him, and in the end we learned he was in Jaslyk."[978]

§ The 2003 report by the U.N. Special Rapporteur on Torture related the story of Alisher Khalikov, convicted in May 2003 on charges related to alleged membership in Hizb ut-Tahrir and sentenced to three and a half years in prison. According to the report, Khalikov's family searched for him for four months following his conviction, before locating him finally at Karshi prison, number 64/49.[979]

Targeted Abuse of Religious Prisoners

All prisoners in Uzbekistan are vulnerable to physical abuse by guards, but religious prisoners face the risk of harsher treatment and additional beatings to "break" them during the intake process and to ensure they will comply with prison rules, including prohibitions on religious practice.[980] Beatings and ill-treatment continue throughout incarceration, as targeted punishment for violating prohibitions on prayer or other religious observance, for failing to sing the national anthem when asked to,[981] or as a means to force independent Muslim prisoners to disavow their beliefs.[982]

According to Memorial, which has undertaken a systematic study of the Uzbek prison system, prison administrations have a special regime of control over political and religious prisoners involving both the prison officials and a network of informants chosen among inmates.[983] Religious and political prisoners are more likely than others to receive demerits for violation of prison rules.[984] Demerits lead to confinement in a punishment cell and undermine the prisoner's chances for release under amnesty.[985]

Prison administrations require religious and political prisoners to wear special markings indicating their criminal status. Ismail Adylov, a human rights defender convicted in 1999 under article 159 and amnestied in 2001, served in a number of facilities, and told Human Rights Watch that prisoners convicted for religious or political reasons were given badges to wear that had a red line going through their name, to indicate their status as having been convicted under article 159.[986]

 

Beatings during Intake

An inmate convicted on religion-related charges and held at Zangiota prison told a relative that when he was transferred to the facility with 130 other comparable prisoners on December 19, 1999, guards took them from the transport vehicle, formed a circle around them, and beat them with truncheons.[987]

Memorial reported that another independent Muslim prisoner from Zangiota said of arrival at the prison, "The following command is given: 'Wahhabis and hizbuchiki-three steps forward!'" The Muslim prisoners are then sent through a "corridor" lined with officers who kick them and beat them with truncheons and wooden sticks. [988]

One man sentenced in April 2000 to six years in prison for membership in Hizb ut-Tahrir and subsequently released under a presidential amnesty decree told Human Rights Watch that when he arrived at Novoi prison number 64/29, authorities there took him and seven other observant Muslim prisoners to a separate area of the prison and beat them.[989]

Punishment for Religious Observance

Guards have punished and beaten independent Muslim prisoners for religious observance in custody, in violation of domestic law, the ICCPR, and international standards for the treatment of prisoners.[990]

Prison officials forbid observance of Muslim rites and rituals. One member of Hizb ut-Tahrir told Human Rights Watch, "The prison 'rules' prohibit ablution, prayer, fasting, calling (da'wa) to Islam, reciting Quran and require singing the [national] anthem, [seeking] forgiveness of and glorifying the president, Karimov."[991] Prison officials, the author claimed, punish prisoners who fail to comply with the rules by beating them with truncheons and stripping them and putting them in cells with "homosexuals"-the intent of the officers was apparently to frighten the prisoners that they would be raped.[992] The rights group Memorial noted that prison restrictions on religious observance have tightened during the course of the government's campaign against independent Islam. Prior to 1999 some prison colonies maintained mosques, chapels, or areas where inmates could gather for group prayer. Prison administrations closed these in 1999, and subsequently strictly enforced a ban on group or individual prayer.[993]

The majority of cases Human Rights Watch documented regarding punishment of religious observance related to prayer:

§ A thirty-one-year-old man who was not, apparently, imprisoned for his religious beliefs or affiliation, became religious after his conviction. In a letter addressed to the Procurator General and provided to Human Rights Watch in July 2002, "Bobomurod Bobomurodov" (not his real name) describes his experience in June 2002 at prison number 36 in Novoi province:

Prison guards…gave my name to Captain of Internal Affairs ["A.A."] because they suspected me of praying. …they asked me for how many years and how many times a day I prayed. I answered that I prayed five times a day. They asked me whether I prayed here in the prison as well. I answered that I did. It is true that I prayed, but I did not disturb anyone. I sat by myself and read the sura to myself…. Captain of Internal Affairs ["B.B."] punched me on my ear. When he hit a second time…my head started spinning and I fell to the floor. Then he started kicking me in the side and my [ribs]. He also insulted me in any way he could think of, including insulting my mother. Then he ordered [A.A.] to bring me to the solitary confinement cell and deprive me of my male dignity by raping me. [A.A.] and another supervisor having brought me to the solitary confinement cell, beat me with rubber batons, and kicked me with their leather boots. My entire body was covered with marks and bruises. I wanted to go to the director of the prison, Lieutenant Colonel O. M. Safarov, but they wouldn't let me. They brought me to a room where I was held. After this my health deteriorated.[994]

§ While in Tashkent prison, Usmon Inagamov continued his practice of praying five times daily. Prison officials reportedly beat Inagamov and deprived him of food as punishment for his practice.[995] Prison guards also repeatedly confined him to a punishment cell for praying.[996] Already ill with cancer at the time of his arrest, Inagamov reportedly contracted tuberculosis and suffered deteriorating health because prison authorities denied him proper care.[997] He died in prison on March 15, 2000. The immediate cause of death is unclear.

Prisoners in the Kashkadaria facility (prison number 64/51), Nasriddin Shamsiddinov, Ikrom Usvaliev, and Baktior Orzikulov, were also confined in punishment cells, reportedly for raising their hands by their heads while performing daily prayers.[998]  Prayer was also forbidden at Zangiota prison and punished with beatings.[999] Similar reports came out of Karshi prison, where guards allegedly beat inmates with truncheons as punishment for breaking the prohibition against prayer.[1000]

§ Shukhrat Abdurakhimov, confined in Zangiota prison, described to his family the beatings he had suffered during the first three months after his conviction. He also told relatives that guards routinely beat those prisoners who pray.[1001]

Prison authorities have banned such basic religious literature as copies of the Koran:

 

§ The relative of one religious prisoner told Human Rights Watch that when she attempted to donate a copy of the Koran to the prison where her relative was being held, offering it even to the prison library in hopes he would have access to it there, the authorities refused to take it, saying that the Koran was a "political book."[1002]

§ According to a press report, some 200 convicted members of Hizb ut-Tahrir incarcerated in Zarafshan prison, just 280 miles outside of Tashkent, wrote a letter to President Karimov on July 24, 2002 regarding restrictions on religion. They complained that prison officials had violated their right to worship and observe religious rites and they called for the government to allow them access to religious literature in prison.[1003]

Authorities also punish prisoners for proselytizing. On August 26, 1999, three days after Tavakkaljon Akhmedov's conviction for Hizb ut-Tahrir membership, his wife went to Andijan prison to meet with him. At the prison, however, authorities told her he would not be brought out to see her that day, as he was in a punishment cell in the prison basement for having violated prison rules-proselytizing, they said.[1004] He was kept in the punishment cell for ten days. In December Akhmedov was sent to Tashkent prison, then transferred to Kashkadaria prison number 64/51 in southern Uzbekistan on January 11, 2000. A female relative who visited him told Human Rights Watch:

In Kashkadaria, the conditions are bad and the guards torture Hizb ut-Tahrir prisoners. He [Akhmedov] looked terrible there...It was clear he had been tortured, but he wouldn't talk about it...I heard the prisoners screaming, and the workers at the prison told me, 'They [the prisoners] are enemies of the state and that's why they're treated so harshly.' [1005]

Punishments to Compel Statements of Contrition or Disavowals of Religious Beliefs

Prison officials reacted swiftly and severely when independent Muslims refused to sign statements of repentance. For instance, according to one authoritative report, Dshamurad Makhmudov, imprisoned on charges of possession of Hizb ut-Tahrir literature, was threatened and physically abused for his refusal to repent. Makhmudov was imprisoned in Zangiota when authorities threatened to send him to Jaslyk, a harsher facility, unless he asked for forgiveness. They allowed a visit from his relatives and then threatened he would never see them again unless he signed. According to the report, "When refusing to negate his beliefs, Dshamurad Makhmudov was reportedly taken to the medical unit early August 2002, as if to examine him, and was reportedly beaten there with bats. Four of his teeth were pulled out, and it is reported that he is bearing scars on the left side of his mouth."[1006]

§ Twenty-six-year-old Muslim prisoner Jalaluddin Mamamirzaev, spent fifteen days (from January 25, 2002 to February 10, 2002) in a punishment cell, where officers beat him in the kidney area and kicked him in the neck, for refusing to renounce his faith.[1007] He allegedly was beaten to the point where he could no longer walk.[1008] A fellow inmate in the Kashkadaria prison, Komil Khaitov, was also punished with sixty days in isolation to force him to renounce his faith and write a letter asking for the government's forgiveness for his "crimes."[1009]

§ At least twenty religious prisoners were reportedly raped in Kashkadaria prison in 2002 to force them to renounce their religious beliefs or affiliation.[1010] A representative from the Kashkadaria province procuracy reportedly visited the facility on March 18, 2002. The representative took the names of sixteen rape victims and met with several Muslim prisoners who had complained of rape by prison authorities. Several men who had complained earlier were reportedly kept in isolation wards during the visit. The following day, prison officials gathered the sixteen alleged rape victims and threatened them with additional abuse, including additional sexual violence, unless they withdrew their complaints.[1011] When Colonel S. Islamov of the Ministry of Internal Affairs came to inspect the facility on March 22, 2002, he allegedly announced to the 2,600 prisoners assembled, "If someone was raped, it's in the past, it's not necessary to talk about it to everyone like sluts. We are not scared of any commissions, whether it's from the 'Red Cross' or the U.N.-we don't give a shit."[1012] 

The Uzbek rights group Ezgulik (Good Deed) reported another case involving a convicted Hizb ut-Tahir member serving his sentence in Zarafshan prison. Prison officials beat Mashrab Mirzakhmedov with truncheons and put him in a punishment cell when he refused to write a statement asking for President Karimov's pardon and recanting his beliefs.[1013]

Denying Opportunities for Amnesty

As noted above, observing such Muslim rituals as prayer and fasting is regarded as violation of the internal prison rules punishable by terms in punishment cells and a demerit on the inmate's prison record. Three demerits make a prisoner automatically ineligible for release under any amnesty passed during that period.

Prison authorities have accused religious prisoners, in particular, of violating prison rules, in order to make them ineligible for future amnesty provisions. They also fabricate other violations, such as drug possession or possession of money, or beat religious prisoners in order to force them to admit to false accusations of breaking prison rules.

§ Guards at Kulyuk women's prison, located on the edge of Tashkent, used accusations of rule-breaking to extend the sentence of convicted Hizb ut-Tahrir member Shoknoza Musaeva.[1014] Specifically, they accused her of having violated the prison's prohibitions on certain religious practices, including wearing a headscarf "incorrectly" in the presence of guards and fasting during the Muslim holiday of Ramadan.[1015] In at least one instance, according to former fellow inmate Mahbuba Kosymova, guards planted a syringe on Musaeva, setting her up with a serious violation of the prison regime.[1016] As of February 2001, said Kosymova, Musaeva had been charged with twelve infractions of prison rules.[1017] Prison authorities, who labeled Musaeva  "enemy number one" in the prison, placed the twenty-nine-year-old in solitary confinement in a punishment cell, first for eight days, then another ten days, and for an unknown length of time again in March 2001.[1018]

Jaslyk Prison

At minimum, hundreds of religious prisoners have been sent to Jaslyk prison.[1019] Local rights groups contend that the government has designated Jaslyk for religious and political prisoners.[1020] The majority of its inmates are reportedly independent Muslims; other inmates include persons convicted of terrorism or other violent crimes who had no connection to religious or political dissident groups.[1021]

Located in the desert of Karakalpakstan Autonomous Republic in the far northeast of the country, this prison is known for particularly high rates of torture and other mistreatment by guards and for inmate deaths from torture and disease. As noted elsewhere, Jaslyk is officially designated a general-regime prison.[1022] However, it is known for having the harshest penal conditions in the nation.

The isolation of the setting has been reinforced by authorities' policies on visitation. As of this writing, not a single attorney had been allowed to visit a client in Jaslyk. Family visits were not permitted until December 1999. Persons arriving by train (there is no paved road to the desert town of Jaslyk) were compelled by police to show a telegram proving that the prison had issued them an invitation before police guarding the train station would allow them to disembark at Jaslyk.[1023] When a Human Rights Watch representative visited the town of Jaslyk, close to the prison, in July 1999, the local police chief told her that entry to the area was prohibited and visitors must have the special permission of President Karimov even to enter the town.[1024] Even when families are permitted to visit, the cost of travel from virtually anywhere in Uzbekistan is prohibitive. Uzbek authorities allowed the U.N. Special Rapporteur on Torture to visit Jaslyk in December 2002, but the two hours allotted was insufficient for a meaningful visit.[1025]

At least during the early operation of the facility in 1999, authorities routinely failed to notify relatives that their imprisoned family members had been transferred from other prisons to Jaslyk. The prisoners were then, effectively, missing in custody for months and cut off from even infrequent visits and transfer of food, clothing, and medicine from relatives.[1026]

Several people have described the general conditions in Jaslyk that violate international standards for the treatment of prisoners. Regarding religious prisoners, Irina Mikulina, attorney for one inmate, said prisoners were kept in their cells for as long as six months without being let outside for fresh air or exercise.[1027] Echoing accounts from others, Mikulina said that prisoners were kept in cells with up to sixteen other inmates and were forced to crouch on their heels with their hands behind their necks all day long.[1028] If a prisoner so much as stretches his leg, she said, he has to say, "Thank you President Karimov."[1029] Prisoners are not allowed to speak to one another.[1030]

Those who have visited their relatives in Jaslyk noted the severely weakened state of their family members, indicating the extremely poor conditions in the facility. The mother of an inmate at Jaslyk sentenced to fifteen years for "Wahhabism" managed to visit her son in December 1999-she was among the first relatives of Jaslyk inmates to obtain such permission. He was obviously weak from malnutrition. She said the prisoners ate barley once a day and were given one loaf of bread a day to be shared by three men.[1031] Another visitor at the prison told her that the inmates were not allowed any fresh air and that guards forced them to crouch in their cells with their hands on their bowed heads, singing the national hymn, while guards beat each prisoner on the back.[1032]

Punishment for Religious Observance

As reported by inmates in other prisons, persons incarcerated at Jaslyk were allegedly beaten, threatened with sexual violence, and placed in solitary confinement for refusing to renounce their religious beliefs.[1033]

Observance of Muslim religious rites is prohibited in the prison.[1034] Those who observed daily prayers were reportedly punished with fifteen days in isolation cells and denial of food.[1035]

United Nations Special Rapporteur on Torture, Theo van Boven, reported on his conversation with the director, or warden, of Jaslyk prison: "The director stressed that muftis come to teach to prisoners 'real' Islam, because of the proselytism by religious terrorists detained in Jaslyk colony. The director proudly mentioned that 70-80 per cent of the detainees write letters of repentance, and that he personally exhorts them to do so."[1036]

Torture

Guards at Jaslyk beat prisoners to "break" them during the intake process, to punish them for religious observance, and to compel them to disavow their religious affiliations and faith.

The attorney for one Jaslyk prisoner, Abdumalik Nazarov, described, in detail, beatings during the intake process. The lawyer, Irina Mikulina, told Human Rights Watch that Nazarov arrived at Jaslyk prison by airplane along with 250 other prisoners-their hands and feet bound-on May 29, 1999.[1037] Upon arrival they were shoved to the ground "like sacks" and then forced to run a "living corridor" or gauntlet of prison guards approximately one hundred meters long (about one hundred yards) up to the prison entrance, while the officers beat them with metal rods and kicked them, causing some to fall.[1038] 

Rights defender Vasila Inoiatova reported that beatings by a gauntlet of officers were in fact a regular occurrence at Jaslyk, not only upon arrival, but also as part of the daily routine.[1039] A Khorezm woman, whose son and husband were both imprisoned in Jaslyk, told Inoiatova that her husband was suffering from medical problems, including blood in his urine, as a result of a practice by guards that involved lining prisoners up in a row, tying their hands and feet together, and then kicking them repeatedly in the groin.[1040]

The mother of the young man serving a fifteen-year sentence for "Wahhabism" told Human Rights Watch, "They'd beaten him so badly that he couldn't even lift up a teapot. He had bruises all over him. We told him to take off his clothes, and we saw that he had bruises all over... 'We are so tired,' he said, 'they torture us.'[1041] The woman noted how fearful he was. Guards interrupted the visit every ten minutes, she said, and each time an officer entered the room, her son would jump from his seat and rush over to greet the guard. Following the family visit, guards at Jaslyk beat the young man again, so badly that he was committed to the prison hospital in Tashkent. There, officials refused to allow any family visits or deliveries of food.[1042]

During the first months of Abdurashid Isakhojaev's incarceration, prison authorities refused to disclose his whereabouts to his parents, but on December 25, 1999, prison officials finally allowed relatives to meet with him in Jaslyk prison. The following is his mother's account of the visit:

They showed us to a room. I heard someone screaming at my son and looked in the corridor and saw two men were carrying him-he could not stand on his own. Abdurashid was so afraid of the man who yelled at him. He said, "No, no, it's probably just because it's my first time in fresh air." They brought him to the room and he couldn't sit normally. When the men went out for a minute, his brother asked him how he was, but Abdurashid was afraid and said all was well. He refused his brother's request to show his body. But I insisted, and I saw the bruises all over, and they were clearly from a truncheon. I asked him what happened. He said, "No, all is well." He was glad to be alive because many couldn't take it. We put him on the bed because he couldn't sit up. [1043]

When relatives saw Isakhojaev again on April 14, 2000, he was in dire physical condition.[1044] Afterward, his parents were called into Warden Ozod Bobojonov's office, where he questioned them about letters they had written to government authorities complaining about Abdurashid's health and conditions in prison. The elderly parents were told to write a letter of thanks to the prison warden. According to the prisoner's mother, Sharifa Isakhojaeva, "We thought about our son in the next room, in their hands, and we wrote the letter."[1045]

Deaths Due to Torture

Human Rights Watch documented six deaths of independent Muslims in Jaslyk prison, from torture, between May 1998 and September 2003.[1046] One additional prisoner was tortured in Jaslyk and then died at home two days after his release.[1047] Below are several examples of deaths from torture in Jaslyk.

On August 8, 2002, the bodies of two independent Muslims, Muzafar Avazov and Husnidin Alimov, were returned to their families. Individuals who viewed Avazov's body told Human Rights Watch that it showed signs of torture, including burns on the legs, buttocks, and lower back.[1048] Doctors who saw the body reported that such burns could only have been caused by immersing Avazov in boiling water.[1049] Those who saw Avazov's body also reported that there was a large, bloody wound on the back of his head, heavy bruising on his forehead and the side of his neck, and that his hands had no fingernails.[1050] The authorities restricted viewing of Alimov's corpse.

In May 2002 Human Rights Watch received reports that prison authorities had beaten Muzafar Avazov and put him in a punishment cell for stating that nothing could stop him from performing his prayers.

Prior to Alimov's death, relatives of people imprisoned in Jaslyk told Human Rights Watch that prison officials had also confined Alimov in a punishment cell. He was reportedly placed there before the end of June and spent many weeks there before his death. [1051]

In a May 2002 letter detailing mistreatment of prisoners in Jaslyk, Alimov was reported as being one of four men who were tortured-they were tied up with rope and raped with truncheons-at the prison from May 14to May 15 for refusing to ask the government's pardon for their supposed crimes and for failure to sing the national anthem.[1052]

On May 26, 2002, Khusniddin Khikmatov died at home, after being released, critically ill, from Jaslyk prison.[1053] He had been serving a seventeen-year prison term on charges deriving from his membership in Hizb ut-Tahrir and possession of a book on Islam that the authorities deemed "extremist."[1054] His death certificate stated that he had died from a "severe intestinal illness."[1055] Days before his death, however, Khikmatov recounted to people close to him the punishment meted out to him in prison for praying and refusing to ask for forgiveness from President Karimov.[1056]

Khikmatov had said that beatings in Jaslyk prison began the day he arrived. When relatives visited him in February 2002, they witnessed bruising on his back and arms. He told them that prison guards beat him, including on the soles of his feet, for refusing to ask for forgiveness from President Karimov and refusing to sing the national anthem.[1057]

In April he began to pray openly, having previously only prayed in secret. For this he was placed in a punishment cell and two prison officers brutally beat him with batons for four days. By the fourth day he became ill with a high temperature and diarrhea. He was taken to the medical ward in Jaslyk prison. When his condition failed to improve, the authorities told him that he would be transferred to the prison hospital in Tashkent. First, however, they took him to Nukus, a town several hours from Jaslyk, and held him in custody for two weeks without medical treatment, he believed in order for his bruises to fade. At this stage he was unable to walk or eat-the authorities fed him via an intravenous drip. The authorities then transported him approximately 1,200 kilometers to Tashkent, twenty-six hours by train, declining the option of sending him on an available flight.[1058]

Khikmatov arrived in Tashkent on May 16, 2002. On May 24 he was released from prison custody and taken to Infectious Diseases Hospital Number 5 in Tashkent, where police continued to monitor him and his visitors. Khikmatov lost consciousness early on May 26; that day the family took him home without the permission of hospital staff. He died in the early afternoon.[1059]

Police questioned visitors to the family home during the ceremony preceding the burial, refusing entry to some. There was a large police presence during the funeral.[1060] The family told Human Rights Watch there had been no discussion with the authorities about an investigation, and made clear that they felt too intimidated to press the issue.[1061] No known investigation into Khikmatov's death has been initiated.

Shukhrat Parpiev, sentenced to five years in prison for concealing the alleged crimes of his boss, died in Jaslyk in May 2000, apparently from torture.[1062] The condition of his body when it was returned, in bloody sheets, indicated torture: part of his head was smashed, his collarbone was broken, he had broken ribs, and his body was covered with what appeared to be scratches and bruises.[1063]

Illness-related Deaths Compounded by Torture or Ill-treatment

In February 2002 Mirkamol Solikhojaev died at age thirty-seven in Jaslyk prison. The official cause of death was tuberculosis, but Human Rights Watch received reports from persons close to Solikhojaev that he had been systematically beaten by guards with truncheons and barbed wire, leaving puncture wounds, during his incarceration. Because the authorities did not investigate the abuse, the degree to which it contributed to Solikhojaev's death could not be determined.[1064]

Twenty-five-year-old Dilmurod Umarov, incarcerated in Jaslyk prison after a conviction on charges of religious infraction and anti-state activity, died there in July 2000. When his mother arrived on July 6 for what she was expecting to be a twenty-four hour visit, prison staff told her she would have only two hours. She reportedly overheard guards discussing her son: one said that Umarov was dying, and another reportedly ordered, "Then bring out a body, at least."[1065] Another prisoner's father, at the prison visiting his son, was with Umarov's mother when guards carried him out.[1066] According to him and another witness, Umarov could not stand on his own; his eyes were "strange" as if he were on strong medication; and he could not open his mouth to speak, he was so weak and incapacitated.[1067] When Umarov's mother expressed concern about her son, Warden Ozod Bobojonov reportedly told her all was in order.[1068] On July 19, less than two weeks later, Enakhon Umarova received a telegram saying her son had died from an illness and that she and her husband could travel to pick up his body. The official cause of death was reportedly given as tuberculosis, but sources who saw his body at the time of burial said he was covered with bruises.[1069]

Abdujalil Gafurov, whom police arrested out of the bazaar where he worked in 1999 on charges of membership in Hizb ut-Tahrir, was sent to Jaslyk.[1070] He was reportedly placed in an isolation cell where he was forced to stand in cold water. Gafurov contracted tuberculosis and died at age thirty on February 21, 2001.[1071]