Uznews.net, 18 Jul 2008, Tashkent – Human Rights Watch has said that the Uzbek law-enforcement agencies use drugs to set up criminal cases against the country’s opposition-minded citizens.
Asked about the latest scandalous political case in Uzbekistan related to the detention of journalist and human rights activist Salijon Abdurahmanov in Karakalpakstan, Human Rights Watch said that its experts had repeatedly come across cases when the Uzbek law-enforcement agencies had planted drugs on their victims.
People charged with religious extremism, attempting to overthrow the constitutional system and terrorism mainly become victims, Human Rights Watch said.
The organisation has collected a huge number of testimonies made at court trials of people who were charged with membership of the Hizb-ut Tahrir Islamic party, the Wahhabism religious current and involvement in bombings in 1999 and 2004 in Tashkent and Bukhara.
Then suspects said that drugs and live cartridges found in their homes had been planted by police officers and that they had been tortured to admit that they had stored them.
Court trials of “religious extremists” that started in Uzbekistan in 1999 soon turned into a widespread phenomenon. According to local human rights organisations, at least 10,000 people have been sentenced on charges of religious extremism in Uzbekistan in recent years.
Drugs were used to charge many well-known imams, Human Rights Watch said. For example, Tashkent imam Abduvahid Yuldashev who ran the Tohtoboy and Ilonli Ota mosques. This list is very long.
As for the detention of human rights activists, opposition members and journalists, Human Rights Watch said, the Uzbek police often use charges of hooliganism and extortion.
After checking computers and print materials seized from dissidents they face additional charges of political nature such as the distribution and storage of anticonstitutional materials.
In the case of Salijon Abdurahmanov, the organisation concluded, the drugs may be a pretext to access his computer and journalistic material.
Salijon Abdurahmanov was detained in Nukus six weeks ago when police found drugs in the boot of his car which, the journalist and his lawyer believes, were planted there by police officers themselves or unidentified intermediaries on their orders.
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