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Family Members: Arrests, House Arrest, Harrassment

Uzbekistan’s law enforcement extended the scope of punishment and persecution of independent Muslims to include their relatives. This followed directly from President Karimov’s declaration of a collective punishment policy against independent Muslims.⁴⁵² The police arrest the fathers, mothers, spouses, children, and siblings of wanted persons, and in some cases harass and arrest members of the extended families of suspects. These tactics enable the authorities to coerce suspects into surrendering to the police and confessing to crimes they did not commit. The authorities also stage “hate rallies” to exhibit prisoners and their relatives as examples of turpitude. The mahalla committees reinforce these persons’ social isolation and bring the weight of the state down upon the targeted community as a whole. The policy is, in effect, extrajudicial punishment of anyone associated with independent Muslims.

Arrests

Tracking subversion through family networks is a legitimate law enforcement strategy. But in Uzbekistan, police do not merely “track” families of suspected independent Muslims. They use relatives—sometimes including young children—as leverage to compel a wanted person to turn himself in, or to compel testimony from a detainee. They also at times hold under house arrest the family members of detained individuals. In many cases, particularly those involving female relatives, family members are themselves accused of no crime. The way in which police detain and question relatives, or force them to sign self-incriminating statements, makes clear that beyond seeking to “track” subversion or conspiracy, the authorities seek to spread fear throughout the independent Muslim community, to compel its members to desist from independent prayer or study, and to convince others to do the same.

Below are details about the cases of arrest, detention, and physical mistreatment of the relatives of independent Muslims. A description and examples of the infamous “hate rallies” organized against family members of “enemies of the state,” can be found below in this chapter.

The Nazarov Family

Official pressure on Imam Obidkhon Nazarov’s family began in December 1997, the earliest days of the government campaign against independent Muslims. The pretexts for the arrests and harassment that followed the imam’s disappearance in 1998 failed to hide the real motive behind the police actions, according to the family’s lawyer, Irina Mikulina, who said, “None of them [Imam Nazarov’s relatives] was questioned about drugs or leaflets, they were only asked, ‘Where is Obidkhon?’”⁴⁵³ Relatives living in the Fergana Valley, especially Namangan, appeared to be particular targets of law enforcement. One family member explained that these relatives were “more vulnerable in Namangan, where police treat people like animals.”⁴⁵⁴

Abdumalik Nazarov

On December 26, 1997, at 8:30 a.m., Fergana province police detained the imam’s father, Sobitkhon, and two brothers, Umarkhon and Abdumalik. The men were taken to Fergana police headquarters, where their car was searched. Having found no incriminating materials during the first search, police took the keys to the car, and then searched the car a second time during the evening at which point they “discovered” twelve grams of marijuana in the trunk.⁴⁵⁵ Fergana authorities kept Sobitkhon and Umarkhon Nazarov in custody several days and then released them without charge, apparently in reaction to diplomatic outrage about the case.⁴⁵⁶

Abdumalik Nazarov, the imam’s youngest brother, was, however, placed under arrest on December 31, 1997, and charged with narcotics possession. Eyewitnesses present at his interrogation told Human Rights Watch that police threatened even more serious charges if the young man did not confess and said that he had been arrested so that “at least one Nazarov” would be in state custody.⁴⁵⁷ On May 4, 1998, Abdumalik, a citizen of Kyrgyzstan, was tried in a Fergana district court and convicted on charges of narcotics possession and possession of falsified documents and sentenced to nine years in prison.⁴⁵⁸ The court’s verdict noted supposedly incriminating witness testimony that, “although young, he wore a beard.”⁴⁵⁹

Authorities transferred Abdumalik Nazarov (born 1973) to the infamous Jaslyk prison on May 29, 1999.⁴⁶⁰ His mother, Mukharramkhon Nazarova, told Human Rights Watch that during his meeting with his father, Sobitkhon, Abdumalik said that from May until December 1999 he was forced to sit in his cell and not allowed any exercise or fresh air. She said that he was being kept in a cell with sixteen other men, that four guards beat him seven times a day every day, that prayer is forbidden and that if any man in the cell attempts to pray, all of the men are beaten.⁴⁶¹ This situation is yet another example of collective punishment which violates fundamental human rights principles.

Despite repeated appeals made on his behalf to the Uzbek authorities and requests for assistance from the government of Kyrgyzstan, he was denied access to his lawyer, Irina Mikulina. She was not allowed to meet him after May 1999.⁴⁶²

Abdumalik Nazarov was released on January 18, 2003, pursuant to a presidential amnesty decree of 2002.⁴⁶³ However, less than three months later police again took him into custody. According to his mother, who wrote to Human Rights Watch about the incident, Abdumalik went to the home of his brother, Imam Nazarov, to visit with his nephews on April 4, 2003. It was his first such visit since his release. As soon as he got to the door, armed police grabbed him and, after conducting a search of the Nazarov home, took him to the Sobir Rakhimov district police station. From there, police transferred him to the Tashkent city police department, where they kept him in a basement cell.⁴⁶⁴ Nazarov’s mother expressed her grief at the cruel turn of events, “Now, after all those years of waiting and hoping…they’ve taken him again…”⁴⁶⁵

Munira Nasriddinova

Police detained Munira Nasriddinova, Imam Nazarov’s wife, and Mukharramkhon Nazarova, his mother, on February 21, 1999, during the initial round of sweeps following the Tashkent bombings. Officers reportedly physically mistreated the two women. Nazarova was released eight hours after her detention. Nasriddinova, however, was charged with “hooliganism” and held under administrative arrest for ten days.⁴⁶⁶ Nasriddinova’s lawyer was unable to locate her in custody for at least four days following her arrest.⁴⁶⁷ It was later revealed that she was held in a basement cell.⁴⁶⁸ According to an Amnesty International report, police interrogated Nasriddinova regarding her husband and Imam Tulkin Ergashev.⁴⁶⁹

Abdurashid Nasriddinov

Abdurashid Nasriddinov (Imam Nazarov’s brother-in-law) was arrested on or around March 1, 1999, and taken into police custody in Namangan. According to Mukharramkhon Nazarova, Nasriddinov, born in 1970, was held in a basement cell and deprived of food for seven days during pre-trial detention.⁴⁷⁰ Namangan Province Court Judge T.Z. Ibragimov sentenced him to eleven years in prison on charges of encroachment on the constitutional order and distribution of religious “extremist” literature.⁴⁷¹ Much of the verdict dwells not on Nasriddinov but on Nazarov.⁴⁷² In so far as the verdict discusses the case against Nasriddinov himself, it states that he was part of the “religious extremist movement” purportedly led by Obidkhon Nazarov, Tokhir Iuldash, and Juma Namangani. Supporting evidence included ten audio cassettes that he had given a friend for safe-keeping that were later found by police to contain verses from the Koran, as well as ten copies of a leaflet entitled, “Jihad: a pillar of Islam and its peak,” which police found in his home.⁴⁷³ One of the most striking moments in the verdict is when the judge asserts that although Nasriddinov maintained his innocence, the court found that in fact he did attend Gumbas (also known as Otallohon) mosque—revealing that affiliation with the so-called Wahhabi mosque was among the “crimes” in question.⁴⁷⁴ The court similarly ignored Nasriddinov’s rejection of the other charges against him. Judge T.Z. Ibragimov found Nasriddinov guilty of encroachment on the constitutional order, and preparation or distribution of materials containing ideas of religious extremism, separatism, and fundamentalism, and sentenced him to eleven years in a strict-regime prison, along with confiscation of his property. The evidence including the leaflets was ordered destroyed.⁴⁷⁵ Destruction of evidence is common in cases involving charges of narcotics or weapons possession, but less common when the material evidence is paper documents.

Abdurashid Nasriddinov was imprisoned in Kashkadaria (prison number 64/51). In February 2000 the Nazarov family’s lawyer, Mikulina, reported that she had visited Nasriddinov in prison in December 1999 and at a prison infirmary in February 2000, where she saw that he was seriously ill.⁴⁷⁶ She said, “They beat him so badly, his nerves are shot…. Now he has a nervous disorder…. He can’t stand on his own, he can’t even talk…. If he has to go back [to the regular prison facility], he will be in bad shape.”⁴⁷⁷ She reported that the infirmary’s chief physician had told her there was no way to treat Nasriddinov at the infirmary because he had been convicted under criminal code article 159 and “we can’t treat political prisoners.”⁴⁷⁸

Akhmadali Salamov and Umarkhon Nazarov

On March 17, 1999, fifteen armed police officers raided the Namangan home of Akhmadali Salamov, Imam Nazarov’s uncle, and arrested him and Nazarov’s brother, Umarkhon Nazarov, who was visiting.⁴⁷⁹

Salamov and Nazarov were tried in the Namangan Province Court and sentenced on May 20, 1999, by separate judges. Umarkhon Nazarov, a Kyrgyz citizen, and Salamov were charged with encroachment on the constitutional order and preparation or distribution of materials containing ideas of religious extremism, separatism, and fundamentalism. Nazarov and Salamov denied all of the charges against them.⁴⁸⁰

Salamov told the court that he believed he had been arrested because of his relation to Obidkhon Nazarov.⁴⁸¹ Indeed, the first half of the verdicts against the two men were identical and contained references to Imam Obidkhon Nazarov’s mosques as among the “Wahhabi” mosques and to the imam as one of the leaders of a supposed “ultra-reactionary” Islamic movement and criminal group.⁴⁸²

The court, in its decision against Umarkhon Nazarov, cited “incriminating” witness testimony certifying that police had found a “Sharp” brand tape recorder, several audio tapes, and unidentified books in Arabic in a trunk in Salamov’s house, where Umarkhon Nazarov was a guest.⁴⁸³ It was further alleged that in Nazarov’s jacket police had discovered four copies of a leaflet entitled, “The Prophet says: Jihad is a pillar of Islam and its peak.” The Namangan Province Court sentenced Umarkhon Nazarov to eleven years in a strict-regime prison and confiscation of his property.⁴⁸⁴

The specific evidence presented against Salamov was witness testimony that five of the aforementioned leaflets were supposedly found in a variety of rooms during a police search of his home.⁴⁸⁵ Salamov was sentenced to four years in prison.

Like his brother, Abdumalik, Umarkhon Nazarov also had a harrowing tale to tell regarding his transport to prison in the Kashkadaria province (prison number 64/51). His mother, Mukharramkhon Nazarova, said that she and other relatives had visited him in September 1999 and that he had told them that he’d been transported by train in July (a particularly hot month in Uzbekistan) and had been forced to stand in the train car along with about seventy other men during the three-hour trip from Tashkent. He said that by the time the train arrived at Karshi city in Kashkadaria, one of the men in his wagon had died.⁴⁸⁶

Akhmadali Salamov was also sent to the prison in Kashkadaria in August 1999. According to the family’s lawyer, Salamov’s mother reported that during a visit in September 1999 she saw bruises on his body and could tell that he had been badly beaten.⁴⁸⁷ According to his attorney, Salamov was released under a presidential amnesty decree issued in 2002, approximately seventy days before his scheduled release.⁴⁸⁸

Authorities used other methods of intimidation against the Nazarov family in addition to the arrest of the imam’s relatives. Pursuant to a court order, Tashkent police attempted to evict Nazarov and his family from their home on April 21, 1998. The effort, illegal since the Nazarov family had not yet exhausted its right to appeal the court ruling, failed when the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE) and U.S. diplomatic representatives joined journalists and local supporters of the imam to observe the police action and prevent the eviction.⁴⁸⁹

Imam Nazarov’s wife and mother were also subjected to humiliating and intimidating public denunciations by police and local authorities.⁴⁹⁰

The Wife and Step-daughter of Imam Fakhruddinov

On March 17, 2001, officers from Tashkent police headquarters arrested Rakhima Akhmedalieva, wife of Imam Rukhiddin Fakhruddinov.⁴⁹¹ Authorities had labeled Fakhruddinov a “Wahhabi” and he was believed to be in hiding since at least 1998, fearing arrest.⁴⁹² Police held the imam’s wife hostage, conditioning her release on his surrender. Police mistreated her, using psychological and physical pressure. When her nineteen-year-old daughter, Odina Maksudova, sought her mother, she too was detained and was forced to incriminate and verbally abuse her mother, as well as threatened with police reprisals against her very young siblings.⁴⁹³ Maksudova was detained again later in March as retribution for her complaints to the international community and in an attempt by police to intimidate her into silence. Throughout, as she wrote in a letter to the international community, police pressured both Maksudova and her mother for information on Imam Fakhruddinov’s whereabouts.⁴⁹⁴

According to Maksudova, Tashkent police ambushed the family home on March 17, 2001, and began breaking down the door and banging on the barred windows. When the family opened the door, out of fear, officers rushed in and initiated a search of the house without presenting a warrant or order of any kind.⁴⁹⁵ Maksudova, who was present during the police search, reported that officers planted leaflets in the house and then claimed to have “found” them.⁴⁹⁶ In the course of the search, which was videotaped by police, officers also confiscated the family’s Koran. Akhmedalieva was arrested on unspecified charges, and authorities failed to inform her children of her whereabouts in custody.⁴⁹⁷ After searching the house, police searched Akhmedalieva’s son’s car, in which they claimed to find additional leaflets.⁴⁹⁸

Odina Maksudova went to Tashkent police headquarters on March 20, seeking her mother. Instead of assisting her, police detained the young woman for twenty-four hours.⁴⁹⁹ Maksudova reported being taken down to the basement where her mother was held and finding her mother exhausted. She had been deprived of sleep and of medicine she needed for a chronic heart condition.⁵⁰⁰ Threatening the young woman with physical abuse, officers forced her to write a statement incriminating her mother and to curse and renounce her verbally.⁵⁰¹ Officers removed the headscarves of both women in the basement, and the officer in charge ordered Maksudova not to wear religious dress or to pray anymore.⁵⁰² In the days that followed, the knowledge that police had used her to exert psychological pressure on her mother tormented Maksudova, who wrote, “Now I can’t forgive myself for these deeds, because my mother is a good and pure woman.”⁵⁰³

The officers made clear Akhmedalieva’s status as their hostage by demanding as a condition for her mother’s release that Maksudova provide them with information on her step-father’s whereabouts.⁵⁰⁴ In addition to threatening the young woman with violence, the officers beat a prisoner in front of her and threatened to place her six-year-old sister and three-year-old brother in an orphanage, “so they [won’t] become ‘Wahhabi.’”⁵⁰⁵

Maksudova was detained again for four hours on March 26, 2001, when she went to the U.N. Mission in Tashkent to deliver the appeal letter she had written on behalf of her mother. The letter was confiscated by Tashkent police who forced her to disavow the appeal.⁵⁰⁶

Imam Fakhruddinov did not turn himself over to police and Akhmedalieva was formally placed under arrest and charged with conspiracy to overthrow the state, membership in a religious extremist group, and possession of religious extremist literature. The state alleged that she and her seven co-defendants had been members of a “Wahhabi organization” led by her husband, Imam Fakhruddinov, together with Imam Nazarov.⁵⁰⁷ In September 2001 the Tashkent City Court sentenced her to seven years in prison.

Following Akhmedalieva’s incarceration, police repeatedly compelled Odina Maksudova to report for questioning, searched her home, and threatened criminal charges against her. As of February 2003, concern expressed by rights defenders regarding the case appeared to have forestalled further police action against the imam’s children.⁵⁰⁸

The Nephew and Brother of Nakhmiddin Juvashev

When Nakmiddin Juvashev, a member of Hizb ut-Tahrir, asked the authorities for forgiveness, as President Karimov had called on people to do, he was arrested, tortured, tried, sentenced, and released on appeal. He was subsequently re-arrested, physically mistreated, tried, sentenced, and sent back to prison.⁵⁰⁹ A nephew, Yadgar Sodykov, arrested with him on August 5, 2000, was held by National Security Service officers in Jizzakh and beaten in order to coerce the young man to incriminate his uncle. Officers released Sodykov the same day they detained him but in dire physical condition. He was hospitalized with a concussion and ruptured aural membrane.⁵¹⁰ The next day, National Security Service agents came to the hospital and took Sodykov, on a stretcher, back to detention.⁵¹¹ At the National Security Service department in Jizzakh, they forced him to write that his uncle had resisted arrest and other testimony they wanted regarding Juvashev. Sodykov charged: “...they beat me terribly and then released me, saying, ‘If you go back to the hospital, next time we’ll bring back your corpse!’”⁵¹² A few days later, after he was interrogated and released again, Sodykov vanished; a relative close to the case told Human Rights Watch he had “probably fled” to seek medical treatment and avoid further abuse.⁵¹³ In his own letter to authorities before his departure, Sodykov wrote: “Because of the poor state of my health, I am forced to get treatment in a hospital, even in another country…in Uzbekistan there is no more justice…”⁵¹⁴

At 5:30 a.m. on September 6, 2000, the day after Sodykov’s detention, seven men in civilian clothes came to the home of Idrisbek Umarkulov, Nakhmiddin Juvashev’s brother. When the family refused to open the door, the officers entered by charging over the fence. They showed no warrant to enter the premises or conduct a search. When Umarkulov demanded to see a warrant, an officer grabbed him and pulled him away. Police grabbed his nineteen-year-old daughter by her hair and pulled her out of the way as well.⁵¹⁵ “E.E.,” a family member present at the time, said the plainclothes officers identified themselves as National Security Service and announced they were there to conduct a search. E.E. recalled, “Idrisbek Umarkulov came out and they twisted his arms behind his back and hit him.”⁵¹⁶ According to Umarkulov’s wife, who was present, he cried out to neighbors, who came over to the house.⁵¹⁷ “Then police said they were going to put my son and daughter and Idris in handcuffs, and I fainted,” Umarkulov’s wife recalled.⁵¹⁸

She regained consciousness half an hour later to find that the house had been ransacked and that police officers were stationed in a car outside her gate.⁵¹⁹ Then the officers, who had discovered nothing incriminating during their first search of the premises, said that the head of the Jizzakh branch of the National Security Service, Abdumannob Makhmudov, had ordered a second search.⁵²⁰ Officers forced Umarkulov’s wife and children, altogether eight family members, into the bathroom, preventing them from witnessing this second search. But neighbors allegedly saw the security forces approach a woodpile near the cow pen, where the agents claimed to find a plastic bag containing a sawed-off shotgun and sixteen bullets for a Makarov pistol.⁵²¹ E.E. noted that the officers did not conduct any further search of the premises after they had “found” the items in the woodpile.⁵²²

Security agents took Idrisbek Umarkulov and his son Sahobiddin Umarkulov, then twenty-three years old, into custody. E.E. reported that officers at the Jizzakh National Security Service beat Sahobiddin to force him to say that the gun belonged to his father, to incriminate himself as a member of Hizb ut-Tahrir, and to say that his uncle, Nakhmiddin Juvashev, had been his religious teacher and had been living in his home during the months he was missing.⁵²³ Sahobiddin, who reportedly was not a member of Hizb ut-Tahrir, refused to incriminate himself and his relatives. According to E.E., a security officer handcuffed one of Sahobiddin’s wrists to the leg of his chair and hit him in the ribs, stomach, and on the head to force him to sign the “confession.”⁵²⁴ He eventually signed a statement acknowledging that police had found a gun on the family’s woodpile but saying that he did not know how it got there.⁵²⁵ However, the officers in charge were dissatisfied with his testimony and subjected the young man to further coercion and physical abuse to compel him to incriminate his relatives.⁵²⁶

The Umarkulov family had hired a private lawyer, Birboi Mamatov, immediately after father and son were detained, and he secured the release of Sahobiddin at 11:00 p.m. According to his mother, one of the young man’s hands was swollen, his cheek was red from being hit by the officer, and he complained that his kidneys hurt because officers had hit him repeatedly in the small of his back.⁵²⁷

Idrisbek Umarkulov was placed under arrest and went on trial for possession of the shotgun and ammunition and a later-added charge of anti-constitutional activity. On that latter charge, the evidence against him consisted mainly of neighbors’ statements—all later recanted. The people in question testified that the statements had been fabricated by the National Security Services and were false, forcing the prosecution to drop this charge.⁵²⁸ One of the neighbors who witnessed the search testified in court that she had seen the officers plant the plastic bag (containing the gun) in the woodpile.⁵²⁹ The Jizzakh Province Court ignored these exculpatory statements and sentenced Umarkulov to six years in prison for illegal weapons possession.⁵³⁰

The Brother of Muzafar Avazov

Twenty-nine-year-old Mirzakarim Avazov was arrested on July 24, 2000, while his older brother, Muzafar Avazov, was in National Security Service custody on charges of membership in Hizb ut-Tahrir. Human Rights Watch interviewed a person close to the case, who witnessed the arrest and followed closely the details of the brothers’ detention, trials, and subsequent incarceration. According to this source, police arrested Mirzakarim Avazov to coerce his brother to sign self-incriminating statements that, even under torture, he had refused to sign.⁵³¹ The same person pointed out that Mirzakarim Avazov “had no leaflets on him or anything.”⁵³² This source told Human Rights Watch that officers at the Tashkent police headquarters beat him in front of his older brother.⁵³³ The U.S. State Department reported in 2001 that, “Members of the National Security Service reportedly tortured Mirzakarim with electric shocks in front of his brother until Mirzafar [sic] agreed to sign a statement incriminating himself and others.”⁵³⁴

Mirzakarim Avazov remained incommunicado for seven months, and was not provided with a lawyer.⁵³⁵ Authorities charged him with distribution of materials containing ideas of religious extremism, separatism or fundamentalism; organization of or participation in an illegal religious group; participation in a religious extremist, separatist, fundamentalist or other banned organization; and “activity as part of a group to encroach upon the constitutional order of the Republic.” He was tried together with twenty-three other accused members of Hizb ut-Tahrir in a Tashkent City Court trial held at the Akmal Ikramov District Court in Tashkent. According to the verdict, Mirzakarim Avazov denied having distributed Hizb ut-Tahrir leaflets and testified that statements given to police during the investigative period of the case had been coerced and extracted “under pressure.”⁵³⁶

Avazov was sentenced to sixteen years in prison while twelve of his co-defendants received prison terms ranging from fifteen to eighteen years.⁵³⁷ Another ten men were sentenced to seven to ten years in prison.⁵³⁸ Mirzakarim Avazov was imprisoned in a Novoi province facility, where, it was reported, he contracted a serious form of tuberculosis.⁵³⁹ According to a person close to the case, police threatened to kill him if his family discussed the circumstances of his brother Muzafar’s death in custody and the government cover-up that followed.⁵⁴⁰

The Family of Imam Tulkin Ergashev

Uzbek authorities were unable to locate the independent imam Tulkin Ergashev, so they arrested his son and brother instead.⁵⁴¹ State authorities targeted both men, mistreated them, and sentenced them to long prison terms solely because of their relationship with the imam.

Police arrested the imam’s younger brother, Abdullo Mirazimov, from his home on the night of February 17, 1999.⁵⁴² In court, Mirazimov testified that police had previously summoned him many times for questioning about his brother’s whereabouts, and that when he—Mirazimov—was detained in February, questioning again focused exclusively on the imam, not on the charges that Mirazimov himself was facing.⁵⁴³ According to a person close to the case, officers beat Mirazimov during interrogation to force him to reveal his brother’s location.⁵⁴⁴

Although the imams Ergashev and Nazarov were accused of being “Wahhabis,” Mirazimov was charged with membership in Hizb ut-Tahrir.⁵⁴⁵ According to the judge’s verdict, supporting evidence amounted only to a police claim that officers had found Hizb ut-Tahrir leaflets and a copy of Al-Vai, a magazine published by Hizb ut-Tahrir, in Mirazimov’s home along with other unspecified religious books.⁵⁴⁶

An additional charge of illegal possession of narcotics was based on the police claim that officers found about four grams of heroin in Mirazimov’s shirt pocket. The court ruled that Mirazimov had stored the literature in order to distribute it later and thereby create a “destabilizing atmosphere,” and he was convicted of attempted overthrow of the state and illegal possession of narcotics.⁵⁴⁷

The night after Mirazimov’s arrest, police came for the imam’s son, Khojiakbar Ergashev, born 1975.⁵⁴⁸ Ten men carried out the arrest, some in civilian clothes and others in special forces (OMON) uniforms, wearing black masks and carrying Kalashnikov rifles. Storming over the wall and into the courtyard of the Ergashev home, they demanded to know the whereabouts of Imam Ergashev and showed a search warrant. While the masked officers stood on the rooftop, plainclothes officers went to the sitting room, where they allegedly planted narcotics under the carpet.⁵⁴⁹ Not finding Khojiakbar Ergashev at home, police threatened that if he did not return soon they would detain his mother instead.⁵⁵⁰ They confiscated religious books belonging to the imam’s family and said there would be additional charges brought regarding the books.⁵⁵¹ According to those close to the case, however, these were all mainstream religious books and included no prohibited materials or even religious leaflets.⁵⁵² At that point, Khojiakbar Ergashev returned home from the hospital where his wife, who had recently given birth, had received treatment. Officers informed him that they had found narcotics in the house, that they would take him in for questioning and would then release him.⁵⁵³ They took Khojiakbar Ergashev directly to the Ministry of Internal Affairs, where they held him incommunicado for one week under the supervision of investigator Yadgar Makhmudov. Police then transferred him to Tashkent prison, where his family was initially unable to see him, but was eventually allowed to meet with him. According to a person close to the case, Ergashev told his lawyer that Ministry of Internal Affairs agents had tortured him.⁵⁵⁴ As they had done with the imam’s brother, police questioned Ergashev’s son exclusively about his father and his father’s whereabouts and disregarded the charges that had served as pretext for his arrest.⁵⁵⁵

Khojiakbar’s mother, Shahzoda Ergasheva, the imam’s wife, was picked up on February 23 and held for fourteen days. According to a source close to the case, the police interrogation of her also revealed that the young man had been taken into custody only because his father was wanted by police; and that authorities were essentially holding the son hostage in order to compel the family to disclose Imam Ergashev’s whereabouts.⁵⁵⁶ One officer told Ergasheva, “If your husband returns, we will release you on the spot, but if he doesn’t come back, your son will go to jail and so will you.”⁵⁵⁷ Upon her release on March 8, Ergasheva returned home to find that police had occupied her house. For the next week, three to four officers held her under house arrest—resting in her courtyard, sitting in her kitchen, and eating the food she was obliged to prepare for them—until they received a call saying that the detention period was over.⁵⁵⁸ Ergasheva became seriously ill and was sent to hospital, where relatives were allegedly afraid to visit her, knowing that anyone seen with the family would be considered suspect by the police.⁵⁵⁹

The Tashkent City Court under Judge V.N. Sharipov tried Khojiakbar Ergashev in May 1999. When called to testify, the young man denied all charges against him and refused to ask for forgiveness.⁵⁶⁰ Judge Sharipov ruled that young Ergashev, under the leadership of his father and two other men, used the “mask of Islamic religion” to call for the overthrow of the established state of Uzbekistan in order to form a Caliphate, or Islamic state, “armed with destabilizing books.”⁵⁶¹ The verdict, citing a decision of the Committee on Religious Affairs of the Cabinet of Ministers, found that the literature that police claimed they found in the Ergashev home was anti-state. The judge sentenced Khojiakbar Ergashev to twelve years in prison for anti-constitutional activities and illegal possession of narcotics, later reduced to six years by the Supreme Court.⁵⁶² The imam’s son is incarcerated in Novoi prison.

The Usmanov Family

Farhod Usmanov, an accused Hizb ut-Tahrir member and son of a prominent imam, died in police detention in June 1999 (his case is described in “Torture and Mistreatment in Pre-trial Detention” in Chapter IV). His youngest brother had been arrested in April, his son was arrested in June. After his death, two more of his brothers were arrested in December 1999 and January 2001, as were his uncle and widow, all on charges of Hizb ut-Tahrir membership.⁵⁶³ While his widow is a member of Hizb ut-Tahrir, it is unclear whether Usmanov’s other arrested relatives rejected the charges of membership in the group. The vigor with which government agents pursued the Usmanov family suggests that charges against many of the Usmanovs may have been brought because of their family connection to Farhod Usmanov.

Seventeen-year-old Oyatullo Usmanov, Farhod Usmanov’s son, was arrested by officers from the Ministry of Internal Affairs sometime in June 1999 and charged with attempted overthrow of the government. He was sentenced to six years in prison by Judge Bashorad Jalilova of the Tashkent Province Court in March 2000.⁵⁶⁴ According to local rights defender Ismail Adylov, the sentence was later reduced and, when he had served his term, Oyatullo Usmanov was released on January 3, 2001.⁵⁶⁵ Human Rights Watch was unable to obtain details regarding the conditions of his release.

Police arrested one of Farhod Usmanov’s brothers, Ravkhat, on December 31, 1999. Authorities charged him with attempted overthrow of the state, distribution of religious extremist literature, failure to report a crime, and organization of a criminal association.⁵⁶⁶ Ravkhat Usmanov’s trial was scheduled to begin on April 23, 2000, at the Chilanzar District Court in Tashkent, and Human Rights Watch attempted to monitor the hearing. The judge postponed it, declaring that the defense lawyer had failed to arrive. But Human Rights Watch’s representative spoke to a woman exiting the building who had been in the judge’s chambers when he made the declaration about postponement and who in fact was the defense lawyer. Human Rights Watch later learned that Judge Meliev sentenced Ravkhat Usmanov to fourteen years in prison.⁵⁶⁷ A relative expressed concern for him, as he suffers from epilepsy.⁵⁶⁸

On January 14, 2001, police detained Farhod Usmanov’s brother-in-law, Faizullo Agzamov, born 1969. A local rights defender reported Agzamov was held incommunicado in the basement of Tashkent police headquarters during pre-trial detention and that the same police investigator responsible for Farhod Usmanov’s case was in charge of his brother-in-law’s investigation.⁵⁶⁹ The officer denied Agzamov’s family any meetings with him.⁵⁷⁰

Agzamov was accused of membership in Hizb ut-Tahrir and was tried along with nine other men on charges of anti-constitutional activity, possession and distribution of “extremist” religious literature, and, in Agzamov’s case, illegal sale or acquisition of foreign currency.⁵⁷¹ Agzamov denied the charges, declaring that he was not a member of Hizb ut-Tahrir at all.⁵⁷²

The state claimed that the late Farhod Usmanov had “drawn” Agzamov into Hizb ut-Tahrir and that, under Usmanov’s leadership, Agzamov had subsequently taken an oath to the group and assumed a central role among its Tashkent leadership. In the verdict’s discussion of the charges against Agzamov, the court named Usmanov as one of the supposed founders of Hizb ut-Tahrir in Uzbekistan—he was not listed as a founder of the group in the discussions of the cases of the other nine men on trial.⁵⁷³ Despite the emphasis on Usmanov in the sections of the verdict dealing with Agzamov, nowhere is it mentioned that the two men were related.⁵⁷⁴ Tashkent City Court Judge M.A. Abdujabarov sentenced Agzamov to seventeen years in prison on September 25, 2001. His co-defendants were given sentences ranging from three years probation and a fine to seventeen years in prison.⁵⁷⁵

Shukrullo Agzamov, another of Farhod Usmanov’s brothers-in-law, was sentenced to a seven-year prison term.⁵⁷⁶ He was subsequently released in August 2002. Farhod Usmanov’s uncle, the brother of Imam Nosir Kori Usmanov, was also arrested following Farhod’s death and sentenced to an unknown number of years in prison.⁵⁷⁷

Father and Mother of Uigun and Oibek Ruzmetov

Local police in Khazorasp in the western province of Khorezm branded the Ruzmetov family “Wahhabi,” and arrested and tortured brothers Uigun and Oibek Ruzmetov. They also detained and physically mistreated their mother, Darmon Sultanova, held Sultanova and her daughter and grandchildren under house arrest, and arrested Sultanova’s husband Sobir Ruzmetov on trumped-up charges.

Arrested in late December 1998, Uigun and Oibek Ruzmetov were tortured and forced to confess to serious anti-state crimes, including terrorism, sentenced to death, and executed.⁵⁷⁸

According to Sultanova, police began harassing the family in November and December 1998. She told Human Rights Watch:

An officer from either the GUVD [city police department] or ROVD [district police department] in Khorezm came to my home when I was there with my daughter, who is mentally ill. The officer’s name was Komil. He insulted me and said, “You are a Wahhabi and so is your daughter and we will shoot you all. None of you will be left alive.”⁵⁷⁹

On the day police came to arrest her sons, police made clear that they had targeted the family for its members’ religious beliefs and activities. Sultanova recalled, “On December 28 seven guys with weapons came to our house at night. I remember two of them: Kadir Saparov and Kodir Atabaev. They demanded to know who in the house prays, and who reads the Koran.”⁵⁸⁰ Five officers occupied the house that night and continued to keep family members under armed house arrest for the next forty days.⁵⁸¹

On December 29 some 200 to 300 armed officers raided the Ruzmetov home and claimed to find bullets in a jar and morphine in the room of Sultanova’s mentally disabled daughter. Police also confiscated a copy of the Koran in Arabic, a book of the hadith of Imam al-Bukhari,⁵⁸² and six copies of sura (chapters) of the Koran in Uzbek.⁵⁸³ Uigun, Oibek, and Sobir Ruzmetov were placed under arrest that day.

Darmon Sultanova

Darmon Sultanova and Sobir Ruzmetov were interrogated at the Urgench police station on January 5, 1999. Sultanova was taken into custody during the night and held at the station for twenty-four hours. She recalled the police interrogation, “They insulted me. They asked me, ‘Who comes to visit you? Who reads the Koran in your house?’”⁵⁸⁴ The officers’ primary motive for taking Sultanova into custody appears, however, to have been as a means of psychological torture and coercion of her sons. According to Sultanova, the officers stripped her down to her underwear in a basement cell at the police station and handcuffed her to a radiator.⁵⁸⁵ Then, they paraded her bruised and bloody sons past her to force the young men to sign self-incriminating statements.⁵⁸⁶ It was later revealed in court that police had threatened to imprison the young men’s parents.⁵⁸⁷ Officers also allegedly threatened to arrest or rape Uigun’s wife if he did not sign a confession and told him his children had already been placed in an orphanage.⁵⁸⁸ The Ruzmetov brothers both signed confessions on serious anti-state charges.

Sultanova was released to police who were occupying her house. Sultanova, herself a nurse by profession, said that her health was so poor during the first four hours after her release that emergency medical assistance had to make several visits to the house.⁵⁸⁹ Sultanova, her daughter Zioda, and her grandchildren were held under armed house arrest for the next month, until February 6, 1999. In interviews and written communications with Human Rights Watch, Sultanova detailed valuable possessions—including a gold watch awarded to her as a “Veteran of Labor”—she claims police stole from her during their occupation of her home. She reported that police destroyed household appliances and furniture before they departed in February.⁵⁹⁰ Sultanova described the police treatment of her and her daughter during house arrest as unbearable. “They beat me several times, saying I was a Wahhabi and asking me where I got my books,” Sultanova recalled, “I said I just pray five times a day and only in Uzbek, I don’t even read Arabic.”⁵⁹¹ She reported that the five male officers confined her daughter to her room for the forty days and did not allow her to come out even to use the bathroom. She said that the officers occupying her home made repeated threats to kill members of the family.⁵⁹² Sultanova also told Human Rights Watch about actions the police took to further isolate the family. She said, “Police officers went around to all our relatives carrying weapons, automatic rifles, and said that our family is Wahhabi and told them not to help us or talk to us. They went to our neighbors and friends and relatives and said this. They threatened our neighbors and others and said not to help that ‘Wahhabi family’ that has weapons.”⁵⁹³ In this case, the threats appeared to have successfully frightened others from interacting with or supporting the Ruzmetovs. Sultanova said, “Now, when I walk down the street, everyone runs away. They were all threatened and told mine is a bad family.”⁵⁹⁴

Sobir Ruzmetov

Sobir Ruzmetov, a retired medical doctor, was interrogated on January 5, 1999. He was arrested on trumped-up charges of illegal narcotics possession, tried, convicted, sentenced, and sent to prison. Three years later he was released pursuant to the 2001 presidential amnesty decree.

Police subjected Ruzmetov to physical abuse during pre-trial detention. According to Sultanova, who met with him afterwards, police beat the sixty-five-year-old Ruzmetov on the genitals and he was unable to walk for some time after.⁵⁹⁵ According to Sultanova, Ruzmetov was denied the right to counsel, “They took him to trial…in leg irons… and tried him without a lawyer. He asked for a lawyer, but they said, ‘he didn’t come.’”⁵⁹⁶ The Khazorasp District Court convicted Ruzmetov on charges of illegal possession of narcotics on May 29, 1999, and sentenced him to five years in prison. He was sent to a facility in Novoi province. After meeting with him in June 2000, Sultanova told Human Rights Watch that her husband had cried and asked about their sons. She said he told her, “They’ll kill you if you pray here, they don’t allow it.”⁵⁹⁷ Sultanova told Human Rights Watch that her husband had stopped praying because he feared the beatings.⁵⁹⁸

The ill-treatment Ruzmetov endured in prison, combined presumably with the execution of his sons, left him in poor physical and psychological condition upon his release.⁵⁹⁹

A Brother of Abdurashid Isakhojaev

Persecution of the Isakhojaev family for Abdurashid Isakhojaev’s alleged affiliation with Imam Nazarov did not stop with the young man’s conviction or his transfer to the harsh Jaslyk prison. After the February 1999 bombings in Tashkent, local police began to summon Abdurashid’s younger brother Muzafar for questioning nearly every week. Police called him on the telephone repeatedly and visited his parents’ home looking for him. According to his mother, as of June 2000, Muzafar had been detained once and taken in for questioning some fifty times since the Tashkent bombings.⁶⁰⁰ He shaved his beard to avoid problems with the police, but this apparently failed to satisfy them. According to his mother, police continued to harass him because “...his brother is in jail and ... he prays.”⁶⁰¹ The combination of being related to a so-called enemy of the state and overtly manifesting his own piety through his appearance and religious practice served to put Muzafar at particular risk. Sharifa Isakhojaeva told Human Rights Watch that her other two sons who did not pray had not reported harassment by police.⁶⁰²

Azim Khojaev, Father of Polvonnazar Khojaev

Along with his brothers, Polvonnazar Khojaev was known throughout his community as particularly devout, and was wanted by police on charges of “Wahhabism” and “religious extremism.” Unable to locate him, police in Khiva, the main city in Khorezm province in western Uzbekistan, focused their attention on his father, Azim, a local metal worker and father of six. (Polvonnazar, it was later discovered, had been living in Russia). According to a person close to the case, beginning in January 1999, local police would come to the house twice a week to summon Azim Khojaev to the police station where officers interrogated him about the whereabouts of Polvonnazar and his other sons.⁶⁰³ Nazira Ishchanova, Azim Khojaev’s wife, reportedly said that the police were “interested in the religious devotion of [the] sons.”⁶⁰⁴ But the young men were abroad and Azim Khojaev either could not or would not compel them to turn themselves over to police. According to one report, as police intimidation increased, Nazira Ischanova asked officers on April 2, 1999, what they were planning to do. A policeman answered matter-of-factly, “We will arrest your husband instead of your sons.”⁶⁰⁵ Police also told a member of the Khojaev family, “If we wanted, we could put a tank in your yard and say it was yours.”⁶⁰⁶ Police arrested the forty-eight-year-old Azim Khojaev on charges of possession of marijuana on April 4, 1999—the very day that a senior government official publicly announced a policy to make fathers pay for the supposed wrongdoings of their sons. Police held Khojaev in custody until his June 11 trial. The Khiva District Court convicted him in just forty-five minutes and sentenced him to eight years in prison on charges of narcotics possession.⁶⁰⁷ A person present at the court hearing gave the following account:

Before his arrest he’d been healthy, but at trial he looked pale and unwell. The lawyer asked the judge to apply the amnesty law, but the judge refused. Azim said he was not guilty and didn’t even know what he was being charged with. In the trial, they didn’t ask about drugs, the judge just asked about his sons and the religious practices of the family. The judge asked if his sons read namaz [prayed] and Azim said yes. The procurator asked if they got some kind of financing from someone somewhere. He asked Azim if he was part of a group…. There was no break to consider the verdict, they just gave it immediately.⁶⁰⁸

Azim Khojaev died in Jaslyk prison on July 2, 1999 (just twenty days after his conviction). The official death certificate gave the cause of his death as “acute failure of the left stomach.”⁶⁰⁹ The family was denied the right to view his body or to be present during the Muslim burial rites when the body was delivered some eleven days after Khojaev’s death.⁶¹⁰ A person who saw the body briefly and who spoke with someone who washed Khojaev’s body in preparation for burial, told Human Rights Watch that the body showed signs of torture.⁶¹¹ This source told Human Rights Watch that Khojaev’s body was bruised on the right-hand side, that there was grazing on his side and buttocks, a cut to the back of the head, and that he had no fingernails.⁶¹²

Father of a “Wahhabi”

In some cases, police harassment of relatives appeared aimed more at exacting revenge than at extracting information. The case of “Abdulaziz Azimov” (not the man’s true name) illustrates this pattern. Azimov suffered social pressure immediately after his son was taken into custody for “Wahhabism” in 1998.⁶¹³ The private shop where Azimov worked in Andijan fired him explicitly because of the charges against his son. Two months later, local police summoned Azimov for interrogation. He did not comply with the police request for two days, and when he did go to the station, police treated him with extreme brutality. The officers kept Azimov for twelve hours, 9:00 a.m. to 9:00 p.m., during which time they beat him continuously with nightsticks, on the back and kidney area, accusing him of being a “Wahhabi,” just as they had his son. The police brutality was visible, according to a person who saw Azimov immediately after his release. “He returned home at 9:00 p.m. only half-alive. His whole body, except for his face, was covered in bruises, four of his ribs were broken, and he had serious problems with his kidneys…He lay at home for twenty days to rest,”⁶¹⁴ the source told Human Rights Watch. He declined to go to the doctor because police had warned him that if he complained about the beatings they would arrest him. Two years after the incident, Azimov still reportedly suffered from trauma. A person close to the case told Human Rights Watch that he shook and trembled all the time and appeared to be psychologically damaged.⁶¹⁵ In June 2000 he was re-arrested on charges of illegal narcotics possession.

Harassment of Relatives

Family members of convicts were forced to report monthly to local police to recount their activities and swear that they had not attended any protests or prohibited gatherings. Some were compelled to sign loyalty oaths to the government and statements avowing that they were not members of any religious sects. Numerous relatives of religious prisoners were “put on the list,” that is, registered with police as suspicious individuals. In at least one episode, authorities pressured family members of imprisoned independent Muslims to publicly “confess” to their own involvement in “extremist” activities in exchange for the state’s forgiveness.

• Local police compelled the wife of Imam Iuldashev, Omina Iuldasheva, to sign statements swearing that she was not involved in any “religious sects.” Officers also summoned her to force her to abandon the hijab.⁶¹⁶ The neighborhood police officer threatened Imam Iuldashev that he would inform the National Security Service if the imam’s wife did not remove her Islamic clothing. He told Iuldashev that information regarding his wife had already been entered into computer files at the Ministry of Internal Affairs.⁶¹⁷ Indeed, when Iuldashev was first arrested, local police officer Jozilboi Suvankulov allegedly threatened the imam’s wife directly, saying, “If you don’t uncover your face, I’ll put you in prison with your husband.”⁶¹⁸ As detailed below, she was also made the object of a local “hate rally.”

The Wife of Shukhrat Abdurakhimov

Just days before the presidential election, around January 6, 2000, officers from the Biktimir police station on the outskirts of Tashkent detained the wife of Shukhrat Abdurakhimov, who had been arrested in April 1999 and sentenced to seventeen years in prison on “religious extremism” charges.⁶¹⁹ A relative reported that the officers who detained her in January 2000 kept Abdurakhimov’s wife for three days.⁶²⁰ Her arrest was among other administrative measures authorities took against religious dissidents in the run-up to the elections.

When Abdurakhimov was arrested in April 1999, his wife followed police officers as they dragged her husband from the family’s apartment in handcuffs. According to an eyewitness, one officer beat her there in the corridor, hitting her on the back of the neck three times with a crowbar that officers initially had used to try to force their way into the house.⁶²¹ After the beating, when the family reported to the Biktimir department of criminal investigations that they planned to take her to the hospital for a medical exam, the deputy of criminal investigations threatened her saying, “If you do, we will open a case against you too.”⁶²² She did not seek medical treatment for her injuries or a doctor’s report regarding their origin.⁶²³

• One woman whose son was accused of being a “Wahhabi” and imprisoned in 1999 on charges of anti-state activity and possession of two bullets, said that she was forced to report every month to the procuracy. “I was told I was ‘registered’ and that I had been ‘warned.’ They think I am agitating people to pray and believe in God, and, because I am a teacher, that I am agitating children to be against the government,” she said.⁶²⁴ The woman, who lives alone and has sole responsibility for her grandchild, told Human Rights Watch, “I am always afraid. They are always coming to me, always questioning me...When I am called in for questioning, they yell at me and address me as if I am guilty. If I refuse [to go], they scare me, and say, ‘We’ll arrest you too. We’ll put leaflets on you or find some excuse to punish you, but you won’t be able to prove it.’”⁶²⁵ In November 2000 local police came to her door late at night to summon her to the station again. She objected, saying she didn’t want to go so late at night, but “They took me by the arms and neck to the station, so they could take my photograph.”⁶²⁶

• Similarly, police reportedly compelled the wife of disappeared Islamic leader Imam Abdulla Utaev to report monthly to the local station for questioning.⁶²⁷

• In some cases, rather than summon family members of a religious prisoner to the police station, authorities paid repeated and intimidating visits to their homes. The wife of accused Hizb ut-Tahrir member Tavakkaljon Akhmedov reported to Human Rights Watch that three police officers made repeated visits to her home to force her to sign a document stating that she would not attend any forbidden meetings or demonstrations. “They came every week and ordered me to sign and eventually I did,” she said.⁶²⁸ Akhmedova also reported that the visits intimidated family members, “The children are afraid and have stopped going to school. They don’t trust the authorities anymore.”⁶²⁹

Some prisoners’ relatives were required to report their activities not only to the police but also to their local mahalla committee. These committees also conducted their own door-to-door surveillance of relatives of religious suspects and convicts. According to a local rights defender in Fergana city, the mahalla committees there have been tasked with intense surveillance of residents, including physically following their movements.⁶³⁰

• Mukhtabar M. (not her real name) told Human Rights Watch in February 2001 that every month since her release from prison in September 1999 her local mahalla committee had summoned her to write a statement swearing that she had not proselytized, was not a member of any unofficial organization and stating that she understood she would “answer for it” if she were a member of such a group.⁶³¹ The elderly woman explained, “I’m on the list of dangerous people.”⁶³²

One important goal of this campaign is to stigmatize independent Muslims in the eyes of their fellow citizens, to halt proselytizing on the one hand and, on the other, to cut off neighbors’ support for the religious prisoners’ families. In addition to the “hate rallies” organized by local officials, even stricter measures are sometimes employed. One acquaintance of the Abdurakhimov family was detained and held for ten days by local police who threatened that if he continued to help families of those arrested the police would “destroy you all.” After police detained him, the man stopped helping Abdurakhimov’s family.⁶³³

• According to relatives of convicted Hizb ut-Tahrir member Tavakkaljon Akhmedov, the local mahalla committee, which is charged with distributing assistance to the elderly and families with small children, has failed to give benefits for the Akhmedov children. The village council, a similar government structure functioning under the supervision of the district mayor’s office, is also responsible for giving benefits to families with young children. The Akhmedov family alleged in May 2000 that this office also had been refusing them assistance since January.⁶³⁴

• The wife of one convicted independent Muslim, arrested because of his participation in private religious classes, reported that when she complained to the state housing office about a leaking roof, the civil servants there refused to help her because of her husband and expelled her from the office.⁶³⁵

Fear for the safety of relatives appears to have been one of the motives for some independent Muslims to turn themselves in to police and to ask for forgiveness for their independent religious activity. What appeared to be several such instances were broadcast on national television in 2001. President Karimov had declared on September 6, 2000, that the government would pardon those people who had “mistakenly” joined “terrorist groups.” By January 2001 Tashkent prosecutors claimed to have begun implementation of the presidential decree. National television broadcast the news along with statements by young men who allegedly had been members of Hizb ut-Tahrir and had been released as a result of this review process. Their statements gave reason to fear that the men had been coerced to appear on television out of concern for the well-being of their fathers. One man said he surrendered to police and asked for forgiveness after his father was imprisoned. Another, Umidjon Inoiatov, introduced as a member of Hizb ut-Tahrir, told the television camera, “They told us that they would teach us Arabic and Koran and then we agreed. They taught us from a book, but then I gradually gave it up. Then in line with the decree, I returned and apologized and was pardoned.”⁶³⁶ The television presenter’s next statement spoke volumes, “It turns out a search has been announced for your father in connection with this. What would you like to say, taking this opportunity?” The young man replied, on cue, “We want him to take advantage of the decree and return to his family.”⁶³⁷