Top: Turkmen human rights defenders, Google Earth; Bottom: OSCE
Top: Seydi exterior, interior, 2007; Google Earth satellite photo; Bottom: OSCE seminar in Ashgabat on penitentiary reform with European experts, November 2011
As Forum 18 News Service and Human Rights Watch have reported, there are at least 11 religious believers in Turkmenistan's Seydi labor camp in the Lebap region.
The photos above were taken in 2007 by human rights defenders who cannot give their names for safety reasons. Google Earth also provides a satellite view. The middle rectangle on the north-western diagonal is the general-regimen camp, where the prisoners of conscience are being held. The upright rectangle on the western side is the strict-regimen camp. The main gate of the camp is on the lower long side, with the road leading down to the southeast.
Imurad Nurliev, the pastor for Light of the World, a Protestant congregation in the town of Mary, is one of the prisoners in Seydi. Pastor Nurliev was sentenced to four years of imprisonment on October 21, 2010 for allegedly swindling funds from four of his parishioners who had visited a shelter run by the church in 2010. All four alleged that Pastor Nurliev forced them to pay a contribution to the congregation, which a trial court ruled as swindling.
Yet as the human rights organizations have reported, one of the alleged victims was in prison for much of the time the alleged swindling was said to have taken place. And in May 2010, the congregants of Light of the World Church were summoned to the Mary city police department, where they were threatened with further harassment, in the presence of police and Ministry of National Security officers, if they did not give evidence against Pastor Nurliev.
Forum 18 reports that ten other religious prisoners are serving sentences for refusal to perform compulsory military service. They are all Jehovah's Witnesses.
