VZCZCXRO4800
PP RUEHDBU
DE RUEHNT #0522/01 0791018
ZNY CCCCC ZZH
P 201018Z MAR 06
FM AMEMBASSY TASHKENT
TO RUEHC/SECSTATE WASHDC PRIORITY 5367
INFO RUEHTA/AMEMBASSY ALMATY PRIORITY 7710
RUEHAH/AMEMBASSY ASHGABAT PRIORITY 1815
RUEHEK/AMEMBASSY BISHKEK PRIORITY 2338
RUEHDBU/AMEMBASSY DUSHANBE PRIORITY 2234
RUEHBUL/AMEMBASSY KABUL PRIORITY 1338
RUEHVEN/USMISSION USOSCE PRIORITY 1702

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 
 
TASHKENT 00000522  002 OF 002 
 
 
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