ACCUSED "WAHHABIS" DETAIL TORTURE IN DETENTION,

C O N F I D E N T I A L SECTION 01 OF 02 TASHKENT 000522

SIPDIS

SIPDIS

DEPT FOR SCA/CEN AND DRL

E.O. 12958: DECL: 03/20/2016
TAGS: PGOV PHUM UZ
SUBJECT: ACCUSED "WAHHABIS" DETAIL TORTURE IN DETENTION,
TRIAL MONITORS INTIMIDATED

Classified By: AMB. JON R. PURNELL FOR REASONS 1.4 (B, D).


1. (C) Summary: Eight defendants being tried on religious
extremism charges in Tashkent have openly testified that
investigators beat and otherwise intimidated them into
signing confessions. Such charges have rarely been raised in
open court sessions in the past. A defendant's mother told
trial monitors that police threatened her with rape to
extract incriminating testimony from her. One trial
monitor's husband has been attacked on the street, and
another monitor abducted, in an apparent attempt at
intimidation. End summary.

GRAPHIC REPORTS OF ABUSE IN DETENTION
--------------


2. (C) In the first week of March, the Tashkent Province
Criminal Court began hearing the case of eight young men
accused of involvement in an Islamic extremist group, a crime
punishable by five to 15 years imprisonment. Post does not
know on what evidence prosecutors have based the accusation,
but it is clear that the case rests largely on written
confessions that the defendants signed in pre-trial
detention. Several of the accused testified in their opening
statements that their confessions were coerced under torture
or severe intimidation.


3. (C) A Human Rights Watch (HRW) monitor said that on March
9, the trial's second day, defense attorney Abdumalik Jalilov
asked Judge Hayruddin Shermukhamedov to investigate the claim
that police officers threatened and intimidated the
defendants in pre-trial detention. In subsequent sessions,
the defendants themselves gave specific and graphic
information. On March 13, one defendant testified that an
investigator threatened to sodomize him with a baton, and
that officers beat another defendant in front of him to
coerce him to sign a confession. On March 14, defendant
Mansur Holikov testified that investigators undressed him,
punched and kicked him, and demanded that he confess to being
a member of a "Wahhabi" group. Holikov also told the court
that he was beaten until unconscious on several occasions. A
third defendant, Alisher Tulaganov, said that he only signed
a confession because an officer beat him in the neck and
threatened him. Tulaganov also testified that investigators
interrogated him without his attorney present, and showed him
two other defendants who had been seriously beaten, to
illustrate what would happen to him if he did not confess.


4. (C) HRW reported that defendants' families have also been
intimidated and coerced into signing incriminating
statements. One defendant's mother reportedly said that she
was summoned to an office of the National Security Service
(NSS) for questioning, and that officers demanded she sign an
affidavit admitting "involvement with politics." When she
initially refused to sign, an officer reportedly threatened
to have her raped by police officers.

THE BENEFITS, AND COSTS, OF TRIAL MONITORING
--------------


5. (C) Aside from HRW, several local human rights activists
have also monitored the trial. According to HRW, the
presence of monitors has made a tangible difference in the
conduct of the trial, and the judge has shown "a meticulous
commitment to procedural nuances rarely seen." However,
during examination of the defendants' claims of abuse, the
judge reportedly assumed an aggressive tone, harshly
questioning the defendants' integrity and demanding that they
explain why they changed their testimony from the original
written statements that they signed during the investigation,
and why they did not speak out earlier about the alleged
abuse.


6. (C) The common law husband of one trial monitor, Elena
Urlayeva, was beaten unconscious on March 15 as he waited to
meet Urlayeva at a bus stop near their home. He has since
been hospitalized with a concussion, and reported that the
assailant did not steal anything from him. One of Urlayeva's
associates, an activist with the Free Farmers (Ozod
Dehqonlar) opposition party, was reportedly abducted on the
morning of March 17 in front of Urlayeva's home. HRW has
characterized both actions as attempts at intimidation.


7. (C) Comment: This trial, along with a similar one taking

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place in another part of Tashkent, is among the first
non-Andijon-related religious extremism trials to take place
since September 2005. The defendants' open allegations of
torture are unusual, as defendants in previous religious
extremism trials have not for the most part discussed abuse
in detention. When pre-trial torture has been alleged in the
past, judges have rarely investigated the claims. Violent
intimidation of trial monitors is also a disturbing departure
from ordinary GOU practice.
PURNELL