Associated Press
November 24

This former Soviet republic, now an important piece in the anti-terrorism jigsaw, is getting a visit Monday from a special U.N. envoy coming to look into charges of deaths in police custody, brutality by prison guards and torture used to force confessions.

Despite intense Western pressure on the Central Asian nation's government over the visit, human rights groups fear the mission will get little real cooperation.

U.N. investigator Theo van Boven will visit prisons and meet with government officials, human rights activists and alleged torture victims to study Uzbekistan's compliance with the international convention against torture.

The issue is so sensitive that both Uzbek and U.N. officials declined to comment on Van Boven's two-week visit to this country, whose secular government is accused of using a heavy hand against Muslim militants.

Previously, the U.N. Committee Against Torture could assess the situation only on the basis of the Uzbek government's own reports. After reviewing the latest report in May, the committee expressed concern about "numerous, ongoing and consistent allegations of particularly brutal acts of torture by law enforcement personnel."

Uzbekistan joined the convention in 1995 but it did not sign the part that allows international investigation of individual complaints about torture.

But since Sept. 11, Uzbekistan has new ties with the West as an ally in the war against terrorism, and international human rights groups have sought to use the relationship to push the government to improve its human rights record.

The government's few steps so far are widely seen as symbolic. Authorities registered the country's first independent human rights group this year, and four police officers and three security officers were convicted in two separate cases of beating detainees to death - the first such convictions in Uzbekistan.

However, no legal action has been taken in at least four new cases of deaths in police custody in the past few months, and new reports of alleged police abuse continue to emerge.

Two prisoners died in August at Zhaslyk prison in the northwestern Karakalpakistan region, a facility notorious for brutal treatment by guards.

"They killed him like a dog. They poured 20 liters (five gallons) of boiling water on him," said Fatima Avazova, mother of one of the dead men, Muzafar Avazov, showing pictures of a disfigured, burned body with a broken skull.

She was told details of the deaths of her son and Husnuddin Olimov in a letter from other inmates. The prisoners said they could hear screams coming from a basement cell where Avazov and Olimov were taken. The two had allegedly angered guards by openly praying and trying to carry out other Islamic rites. Both were serving terms for alleged religious extremism.

In October, a man died in police custody in Tashkent two days after his detention on suspicion of robbery. Izatullo Muminov's body was returned to his family with strangulation marks on his neck and his back was black with bruises.

Three defendants at a trial now under way in Tashkent said they were beaten and tortured into confessing to links to the Islamic opposition and a murder.

Iskander Khudayberganov, who faces a death sentence in the trial, has suffered repeated beatings, twice been subjected to electric shocks and also is given unknown injections before each court hearing, his sister Dilobar Khudayberganova charged.

Human rights activists argue it will be hard for the U.N. investigator to get at the facts.

They say about 100 of the most outspoken and defiant prisoners have been transferred over the past few weeks from Zhaslyk prison to Zangi Ota prison on the outskirts of Tashkent.

Relatives of inmates contend they have been forced to write and sign letters expressing happiness with prison conditions. Some of those expressions of gratitude were filmed, they say, apparently to be shown to U.N. officials.

Matilda Bogner, a Human Rights Watch researcher in Uzbekistan, said she is waiting to see how the government reacts to van Hoven's recommendations after his trip.

"Unless there is some response, the fact that they have allowed him to come does not mean anything," Bogner said.

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