Jakob Gijsbert de Hoop Scheffer
Chairman-in-Office
Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe
PO Box 20061
2500 EB The Hague
The Netherlands

Dear Mr. De Hoop Scheffer,

I am writing on the eve of your trip to Ashgabat to ask you to urge President Saparmurat Niazov to promptly and unconditionally release environmental activist Farid Tukhbatullin, who was arrested on December 23, 2002.

Mr. Tukhbatullin is an innocent man who has been wrongly imprisoned. The office of the prosecutor has charged Mr. Tukhbatullin with illegally crossing the Uzbek-Turkmen border (article 214.1 of the Turkmen criminal code) and failing to disclose a crime (article 210.1). As you may know, the first charge derives from an incident in September 2001, when Mr. Tukhbatullin crossed the border legally; Turkmen border guards, however, failed to stamp his passport. The second charge derives from an international conference on human rights in Turkmenistan that Mr. Tukhbatullin attended in November 2002. Authorities allege that former Foreign Minister Avdy Kuliev announced that Boris Shikhmuradov planned a violent overthrow of the government in the near future, and that in failing to report this information to Turkmen authorities upon his return to Turkmenistan, Mr. Tukhbatullin concealed a planned crime.

Human Rights Watch attended this conference, which was organized by the International Helsinki Federation, and I can personally assure you that no such allegations were made. We believe the Ministry of National Security is bringing these charges to intimidate people like Mr. Tukhbatullin, and to assure Turkmenistan’s courageous civic activists’ further isolation by preventing them from attending international fora.

For the past month Turkmen authorities have denied Mr. Tukhbatillin access to legal counsel. His trial has been set for March 4.

This is a unique opportunity to relate to President Niazov the international community’s certainty in Mr. Tukhbatullin’s innocence and integrity, and of its determination to see him released.

Thank you for your urgent attention to this letter.