August 2
UZBEKISTAN:
Amnesty calls to commute death penalty sentences
[This report does not necessarily reflect the views of the United Nations]
The international rights watchdog, Amnesty International (AI), has called
upon Tashkent to commute the capital sentences of 2 prisoners allegedly
tortured to confess to murder.
"We are calling on the Uzbek authorities to commute the sentences of Ikram
Mukhtarov and Yusuf Zhumayev and all other death penalty sentences," Anna
Sunder-Plassmann, AI researcher for Central Asia, told IRIN from London on
Monday, fearing both prisoners were allegedly tortured into making their
confessions.
Zhumayev, 21, accused of murdering his brothers wife, his niece and his
nephew, was sentenced to death by the Sukhandarya regional court on 28
April.
According to an AI statement on Saturday, he has consistently maintained
his innocence and stated that he had been threatened that his parents and
sister would be arrested if he did not confess to being guilty.
Sunder-Plassmann noted that he testified during his trial that he had been
tortured, but his "allegations were ignored."
Zhumayevs brother, husband and father of the murder victims, said that he
didnt believe Zhumayev was a murderer and added that he never had bad
intentions against his family, AI reported.
In a separate case, the Tashkent city court sentenced Ikram Mukhtarov,
convicted of murdering a woman and a man in May 2001, to death on 24 May.
AI said that he also made allegations of torture in court, but these were
reportedly not investigated.
"The UN Special Rapporteur on torture said that torture and similar
ill-treatment were systematic in Uzbekistan," the AI official maintained,
explaining that her organisation was receiving up to 1,100 alleged reports
of torture in the Central Asian state each year.
In light of the torture allegations, the UN Human Rights Committee urged
the Uzbek authorities on 19 July to stay these executions, as well as to
establish whether provisions of the International Covenant on Civil and
Political Rights had been violated in their cases. However, Uzbekistan has
ignored UN Human Rights Committee interventions in some 12 cases in the
past.
"Both of them [Zhumayev and Mukhtarov] are now believed to be in a
particular prison in Tashkent where people are given electric shocks,"
Sunder-Plassmann claimed, concerned that the executions could happen very
soon, as neither the convicted nor their relatives had been informed of
the execution's date.
Since 2000, the death sentences of at least 13 cases have been replaced by
long term imprisonment in cases that AI and the UN Human Rights Committee
have taken up. "It is very clear that pressure from international
community can have an impact," she stressed, calling on the world
community to exert great pressure on Tashkent.
Belarus and Uzbekistan are the last 2 countries in the former Soviet Union
which still execute prisoners. Several local human rights groups in
Uzbekistan believe that more than 200 people are executed every year.
"Uzbekistan is the one which executes the most," Sunder-Plassmann
maintained, calling upon the authorities to make significant moves to
abolish the death penalty by introducing a moratorium on such executions.
(source: IRIN)
