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SUMMARY

Widespread torture of detainees is common in criminal investigations in Uzbekistan, and has become an unmistakable feature of the government's crackdown against independent Islam. Uzbekistan's government refuses to hold police and security forces accountable for acts of torture, and even tacitly encourages torture though its broadcasting of political prisoners' public "confessions" as tools of political propaganda. Instituting legal and judicial reform to halt torture, and ending impunity for it, should be a matter of priority for the government of Uzbekistan and for all parties interested in human rights and the security and stability of the region.

Persons detained by police in Uzbekistan are routinely subjected to physical and psychological abuse, often from the initial moments of their arrest. Mounting numbers of deaths in pre- and post-conviction detention facilities over the past two years attest to the brutality of the treatment meted out against detainees and prisoners. Although Uzbek law criminalizes torture, few law enforcement officers are held accountable for it. Uzbek courts routinely rely on evidence extracted under torture, despite rulings barring the admissibility of this evidence.

This report is based on four years of research conducted by Human Rights Watch researchers in different provinces of Uzbekistan. We interviewed scores of former detainees and family members of current and former prisoners, and their lawyers, who gave detailed testimony about gruesome torture practices, despite the pervasive atmosphere of fear generated by Uzbekistan's hardened authoritarian political system. Their accounts, and the proceedings of dozens of trials in which defendants made allegations of torture, all substantiate the pattern of official acceptance of the practice of torture. Most of them testified to abuse in the pre-trial detention facilities of Tashkent's Ministry of Internal Affairs headquarters (MVD), the headquarters of the National Security Service (SNB, formerly the KGB), and Tashkent's Municipal Police Department (GUVD), but victims and their families also testified to torture in police lock-ups in all other provinces of the country and the Autonomous Province of Karakalpakstan.

Torture victims include those arrested in connection with common crimes as well as those accused of political and religious offenses. The mass arrests of those suspected of opposition sentiment based on their religious affiliation, however, has brought to light many instances of torture, often during trials in which defendants have detailed their ill-treatment. Since 1998, the government has arrested thousands of persons in a crackdown against those whose practice of Islam falls outside of state-sanctioned religion, often charging them will ill-defined crimes of "religious extremism."1 Police routinely torture defendants in these cases not only to obtain confessions but to force them to incriminate others with whom they have prayed or studied Koran. Government officials have publicly announced a policy of holding families accountable for the actions of any of their members suspected of illegal religious activity; consequently, the relatives of those accused or sought are often detained, held as hostages, threatened with torture, or are tortured themselves.

The Uzbek criminal justice system lacks procedural safeguards against police abuse, as it grants the prosecution wide powers concerning pretrial custody, access to lawyers, and access to forensic evidence. Detainees do not have the right to appeal the lawfulness of their detention or to protest ill-treatment before a judge until their case goes to court, an egregious violation of international law governing detainees' rights. Despite a newly-instituted code of criminal procedure containing provisions for release of accused persons on bail during the preliminary investigation phase, custody during investigation and prior to trial is the rule, rather than the exception, and often takes the form of incommunicado detention.

It is during the preliminary investigation phase, before suspects are formally charged, that the most severe abuse takes place. Although Uzbek law provides for access to legal counsel from the moment of detention, 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 lawyers for access to their clients in lock-ups or remand prisons until they 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 interests, and who are unlikely tolodge complaints against ill-treatment. Even when lawyers do gain access to clients in lock-ups and remand prisons, they do not have the right to freely arrange independent, objective forensic medical examinations that could provide evidence of torture. Uzbekistan law grants the police or procuracy investigator handling a case the authority to approve or reject a detainee's or lawyer's request for a forensic medical examination; these requests are often simply denied. Those attorneys who do attempt to request a forensic examination face grave consequences, as do their clients, of retribution by police.

Police corruption abounds. Families are extorted for bribes in order to have their relatives released and to lessen the severity of the charges against them. In addition, judicial corruption is linked with harsh prison sentences, as leniency must be purchased.

Fearful of the consequences of speaking out during the investigation, victims and their lawyers may wait until the case comes to trial to raise a protest against torture. Judges who receive such testimony rarely take it into account when assessing the state's case against the accused, or initiate investigations as called for by Uzbek law. Despite legal prohibitions on the use of evidence obtained under torture, courts routinely admit coerced confessions into evidence and issue convictions on that basis. Judicial refusal to investigate victims' allegations allows those police, prosecutorial, and security service officials who order and carry out acts of torture to do so with impunity. Even in the exceptional cases when initial convictions, issued on the basis of coerced confessions, were overturned, police investigators responsible for torturing the defendants have not been called to account.

Based on the findings of this report, Human Rights Watch issued a series of detailed recommendations to the government of Uzbekistan, to the United Nations and other intergovernmental organizations, Uzbekistan's bilateral partner states, and to international financial institutions, which can be found at the end of this report. They include calls for the government of Uzbekistan to hold torturers criminally accountable for their acts, to guarantee that detainees' right to counsel is upheld, and to amend criminal procedural legislation to include judicial review of arrests. Human Rights Watch calls on the United States and European Union governments to hold Uzbekistan to account for its failure to respect the U.N. Convention against Torture, to which it is a party. We urge them, as well as international financial institutions, to condition certain types of assistance to Uzbekistan on improvements in respect for human rights, including ending the practice of torture.

1 Uzbekistan retained the Soviet system of regulating religion through a government agency, the Spiritual Board, which approves all serving clerics, regulates their sermons, produces and distributes the only legal religious literature and licenses religious teachers. In 1998 and 1999, the government passed stiff criminal penalties for so-called "illegal religious activity."

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