Gulnora Oltiyeva, Juma’s wife, believes that EU President France and its President Sarkozy should intervene and save her husband who is facing torture in the remote Karakalpak prison, Jaslyk.
The regime wants to kill him for criticising dictator President Islam Karimov, who has been ruling the country since 1989.
For staging rallies in the run-up to the presidential election in December 2007 in which Karimov’s participation was unconstitutional, he and his two sons Mashrab and Bobur were detained by police.
Oltiyeva wrote to Sarkozy that during nine months since his arrest he had been kept in several prisons where he had been tortured and told that he was Islam Karimov’s personal enemy.
Now, he is facing death, his wife wrote, because his body cannot withstand torture, beating up and starvation anymore.
In her letter, Oltiyeva complained that her husband was often kept in solitary cell and that he was not allowed to see his lawyer.
That the EU will discuss sanctions imposed against Uzbekistan for the massacre in Andijan in May 2008, she believes, offers an excellent opportunity to France to defend innocent victims of the dictatorial regime in Uzbekistan.
“Leaders of democratic countries, pursuing their interests, are trying to see positive sides of Karimov’s totalitarian regime. They think that by abolishing the death penalty and allowing the Red Cross to visit Uzbek prisons Karimov has taken a great step towards democracy,” the letter says.
She said that despite these steps the authorities started to kill convicts in prison. Her 22-year-old son Mashrab, who was imprisoned soon after his father, was also tortured, and the authorities now claim that he escaped from prison but no-one knows whether he is alive or not, Oltiyeva said.
She urged Sarkozy not to allow the abolition of the EU sanctions because the authorities tortured thousands of prisoners in the country.
She said if her husband was not released, he would be killed. “This should be prevented,” she asked Sarkozy in the letter.