154 Europe and Central Asia Summary of Amnesty International’s Concerns in the Region, January – June 2007 Allegations of torture or other illtreatment AI remained seriously concerned about continuing persistent allegations of widespread torture or other ill-treatment of detainees and prisoners by law enforcement personnel and the failure by the relevant authorities to consistently, effectively and systematically investigate such allegations. In 2006 and again in 2007 the UN Special Rapporteur on torture reiterated his concerns about the apparent widespread use of torture in Uzbekistan. Very few law enforcement officers were brought to trial and held accountable for the human rights violations they committed and yet thousands of people – in pre-trial detention or convicted – routinely alleged that they had been arbitrarily detained and tortured or ill-treated in custody in order to extract a confession. In January the deputy Minister of Internal Affairs of Uzbekistan told AI that six or seven police officers had been convicted on torture-related offences in 2005 and 2006. AI welcomed the fact that prosecutions of persons responsible for torture and ill-treatment had taken place. However, AI considered that the numbers of convictions were alarmingly low considering that international human rights organizations, international governmental organizations and the governments of UK and the United States of America, for example, estimated that at least 6,000, convicted on politically-motivated charges after reportedly unfair trials, were tortured or otherwise ill-treated in detention. The allegations of torture which AI continued receiving stemmed not only from men and women suspected of membership of banned Islamic groups or of having committed terrorist offences, but stretched right across all layers of civil society, including human rights activists, journalists and former members of the government and security forces, often high-profile. Corruption in law enforcement and the judiciary contributed to a climate of impunity, which in turn led to a lack of public confidence in the criminal justice system. Amnesty International Several thousand people convicted of involvement with banned Islamic organizations continued to serve long prison terms in conditions which amounted to cruel, inhuman and degrading treatment. Members of secular opposition parties, such as Erk and Birlik, who had been convicted of anti-state crimes following clampdowns against the political opposition in the mid90s as well as following bomb explosions in Tashkent in 1999, also continued to serve long prison terms in very harsh conditions. The case of Erkin Musaev Erkin Musaev, a former Ministry of Defence official, was working for UN Development Programme (UNDP) when he was detained in January 2006. He was charged and convicted of spying for an unidentified member state of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) state and of misusing UN funds, and was sentenced to prison terms of 15 and six years respectively, after what appears to have been an unfair trial. He and his family claim that he was falsely charged, and that he was tortured by the officers of the National Security Service (SNB). They have also claimed improper practice in the court processes. Erkin Musaev worked for the Ministry of Defence and for the NATO Partnership Coordination Cell, before getting a job at the UNDP. In January 2006, he was working as a Country Manager of the UNDP’s Border Management Programme, when he was arrested at the airport in Tashkent on his way to a UN-EC conference in Bishkek, Kyrgyzstan. In a recorded oral testimony, he claims that the SNB first told him that they had found drugs in his bag, and threatened to arrest him for drug trafficking. They then claimed instead to have found a disc in his bag containing confidential information, and accused him of espionage. He, in turn, maintained that the disc was planted in his bag by the SNB. Ten days of questioning reportedly followed his detention, in which he was denied the right to contact relatives; he was subject to psychological intimidation, being told that he would be prosecuted for involvement AI Index: EUR 01/010/2007