Two More Uzbek Prisoners Reported Dead; New Sentences Handed to Others
Two prisoners have reportedly died in Uzbekistan's notorious Jaslyk prison, Hizb-ut-Tahir, a radical Islamic group reported via email February 15. Hizb-ut-Tahir, which seeks to restore an Islamic caliphate in Central Asia, is banned in Uzbekistan and other countries as operating outside state-sanctioned religious bodies.
Hizb-ut-Tahir's central office in London, where the organization has legal status, issued a statement saying that Uzbek authorities reportedly released the corpses of two of their members whose names were not provided, one from Andijan and the other from Ferghana, claiming they had died of heart disease. The information could not be confirmed. The group said two other followers whose first names only were available were handed additional prison terms just as their original terms were expiring; Shukrullah was sentenced to a further 16 years and Shaukhrat was handed three more years, and transferred to another prison.
According to a report from the independent Uzbek news site uznews.net today, the Initiative Group of Independent Human Rights Activists in Uzbekistan has also reported that officials in Jaslyk are re-sentencing inmates prosecuted on religious charges.
Surat Ikramov, head of the Initiative Group, reported in December that his organization had a list of 39 prisoners who had died in detention. He also told uznews.net that since 2006, each religious prisoner who reached the end of his sentence was being re-tried for "insubordination".
"I know of cases when persons sentenced for religious reasons had their sentence extended three times in a row as they reached the end of a term, with three to six years added on each time," uznews.net quoted him as saying. He believes the government is refusing to release the prisoners not because they fear new terrorist attacks, but as a lesson to intimidate other religious believers.
A typical case documented by the Initiative Group is that of Nabijon Mamjanov, 35, detained on his way home from work by police and security agents on suspicion of involvement in Hizb-ut-Tahir in March 1999 , then tortured until he confessed. He was subsequently tried and sentenced in June 1999 to 19 years of prison for "undermining the Constitutional order of the Republic of Uzbekistan," "preparing or distributing materials containing a threat to public security or public order" and "creation, leadership, or participation in religious extremist, separatist, fundamentalist or other banned organizations". Upon appeal, the sentence was reduced to 12 years of prison. Mamjanov served his term in Navoi Prison and was then transferred to Jaslyk in Karakalpakstan, a facility in a remote area known for its torture and murder of inmates.
Mamjanov's wife Shamshikhon came to the prison February 10 for a meeting with her husband, hoping he would be released in March, but then the meeting was postponed. She returned February 12, only to find out he had been sent to an isolation cell and handed an additional term for "insubordination".
Since a series of explosions in Tashkent in 1999, the Uzbek government has arrested thousands of Muslims from Hizb-ut-Tahir and other groups, said Ikramov. Little evidence is provided in hasty trials behind closed doors, where the defendants show signs of torture and receive insufficient legal defense. The Initiative Group put the number of such cases at about 14,000 religious believers who have been sentenced, with 9,000 still in detention.
The information has not been able to be confirmed by international organizations which have been denied accreditation in Uzbekistan. In 2008, the International Committee of the Red Cross was able to resume prison visits in Uzbekistan, but does not publicize its findings and according to a local organization, Ezgulik, has not been granted access to certain prisoners of concern.
Hizb-ut-Tahir ties the timing of the deaths and new sentences of their members to the January 24 trip of President Islam Karimov to Brussels to meet with NATO Secretary General Anders Fogh Rasmussen and EU Commission President José Manuel Barroso. It is difficult to know what transpired at that meeting; when Karimov returned, he immediately raised the price of transit tariffs for NATO deliveries along the Northern Distribution Network, the supply line to Afghanistan. This could be a signal that NATO failed to reach an agreement with Karimov and now he is squeezing Washington for higher fees.
A large number of Hizb-ut-Tahir activists picked the Uzbek Embassy in Brussels during Karimov's visit, but according to the blogger De Cordier at neweurasianet.org, unlike a smaller picket organized by international human rights groups in front of NATO headquarters, the action received no media attention.
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