Reuters
December 6

A United Nation's rapporteur accused Uzbekistan on Friday of routinely using torture to terrorize opponents and obtain confessions which sometimes resulted in courts handing down the death penalty.

Uzbekistan is home to a U.S. airbase used in the military campaign in neighboring Afghanistan, and is a key U.S. ally in the "war on terrorism."

"Torture as far as I can see, it is my impression, is not just incidental but...is systemic in this country," U.N. human rights rapporteur on torture Theo van Boven told a news briefing.

During his two-week fact-finding mission to the secretive Central Asian state, Van Boven interviewed dozens of torture victims, members of their families and other relatives.

He said the forms of torture used by Uzbek police and secret services included beatings, electric shocks, immersion of the victim's head in water and suffocation with plastic bags.

Van Boven said he had found that families and relatives of those arrested were often threatened with torture and rape.

"I am concerned...about many confessions obtained through torture and other illegal means which are then used as evidence in trials that are leading to death penalties or very severe punishment," he said.

There was no immediate reaction from the government of President Islam Karimov, who brooks no dissent in the poor nation of 25 million that he has run since Soviet times.

Van Bowen said he had met senior Uzbek officials but was barred from a secret police jail in Tashkent. He was also unhappy with his visit to the dreaded Dzhazlyk prison in western Uzbekistan, where political prisoners are said to be held.

"I could not carry out the visit to Dzhazlyk in a satisfactory and comprehensive manner," he said. The visit lasted two hours instead of the planned six, and his interview with the head of the prison "was interrupted."

Washington invited Karimov on a state visit this year and a stream of top-level U.S. and European Union visitors have been to Tashkent since the September 11 attacks on the United States.

Karimov has watched the chronic instability in Afghanistan with unease and fears militant Islam will spill over the border.

While expressing some understanding of these concerns, the West and human rights bodies criticize him for what they call a disproportionate clampdown on dissent under the pretext of fighting religious extremism.

Van Boven said his report would be presented to the U.N. General Assembly in January and released to the public in March.

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