Russia Blocked from Extraditing Uzbek Nationals to Risk of Torture

In an important judgment issued on April 24, the European Court of Human Rights prohibited Russia from extraditing a group of Uzbek refugees to Uzbekistan, where the refugees feared they would be tortured upon return. The decision in the case of Ismoilov v. Russia is a key judgment in the court's growing jurisprudence rejecting diplomatic assurances against torture as unreliable and insufficient. Human Rights Watch supported the Russian lawyers defending the Uzbek men and, working closely with the London-based AIRE Centre, directly intervened in the case with an amicus (friend-of-the-court) brief to the European Court. The Ismoilov judgment cited liberally from our brief, arguing that Uzbekistan's diplomatic assurances against torture were inherently unreliable. It also acknowledged the value of fact-finding by nongovernmental human rights organizations, and directly referenced Human Rights Watch's documentation of torture in Uzbekistan.