Laziz Saidov, a Muslim from Guzar district 40 kilometres (25 miles) south of Karshi [Qarshi], has made a formal written complaint against being tortured to Uzbekistan's Prosecutor General, Rashid Kadyrov, Forum 18 News Service has learnt. Saidov is in temporary detention in Karshi, apparently for being a devout Muslim, and states in his complaint that investigators forced him under torture to confess to keeping leaflets in his home published by the banned radical Islamic Hizb-ut-Tahrir party, according to human rights activist Tulkin Karayev.
In Saidov's formal complaint, he states that the police manacled his arms and legs, and beat him on the shins and head until he agreed to sign a confession.
This is not the first report known to Forum 18 of torture being used against the many Muslims arrested after the terrorist attacks being tortured in Karshi's temporary cells. During a hearing at Kashkadarya regional criminal court on 28 July, Azim Kambarov told Judge Nurilla Ziyadullayev that he had been severely beaten during the investigation and that his false teeth had been smashed several months previously.
Judge Ziyadullayev banned journalists and human rights activists from attending the trial.
Laziz Saidov was arrested along with three friends (Ilkhom Gafarov, Bakhrom Khalmuradov and Ubaidulo Nasirov) on 3 April, a separate group of Muslims from Kamashi district, some 100 kilometres (60 miles) south-east of Karshi, being arrested on 4 April. The police claimed to have found leaflets published by Hizb-ut-Tahrir in all their homes, but the accused Muslims, accused under six articles of the Criminal Code, claimed the leaflets were planted.
Tulkin Karayev maintains that the detainees are simply devout Muslims, and that they have not engaged in any terrorist activity. He estimates that more than 100 people have been arrested. Mass arrests of devout Muslims followed the terrorist attacks in Tashkent at the end of March and beginning of April in Karshi region.
On 26 August, Forum 18 spoke to the head of the detention cells in Karshi, Panzhi Nazarov, by telephone. Nazarov admitted that Laziz Saidov was being held in cells in Karshi, but said he knew nothing about Saidov's confession having been obtained under torture. "Maybe he was beaten up in Guzar rather than here?" Nazarov suggested. Nazarov also said that the court case against Saidov and his associates would establish whether the confessions had been obtained from the accused under torture. He told Forum 18 that he could neither confirm nor refute information about some Muslims being tortured.