152 Europe and Central Asia Summary of Amnesty International’s Concerns in the Region, January – June 2007 prompted them from their initial signed statements to the police. He also reportedly interrupted Umida Niazova repeatedly while she questioned witnesses. Access to the trial was restricted. Both articles carry possible prison terms of up to 10 years. On 8 May Umida Niazova was released from the court-room after a judge changed her seven-year sentence on appeal to a threeyear suspended one. Umida Niazova pleaded guilty to all three charges during the appeal hearing and accused international organizations, and in particular HRW, of having misled her. AI expressed its dismay at the way her release had been obtained. Gulbahor Turaeva, a pathologist and human rights activist from Andizhan, who in 2005 had spoken out to foreign media and questioned the official version of the Andizhan May 2005 events was detained on 14 January at the border on her way back from neighbouring Kyrgyzstan, reportedly carrying around 120 publications in her bags, including books by the exiled leader of the banned secular opposition Erk party. On 24 April 2007, convicted of attempting to overthrow the constitutional order, and distributing subversive materials, she was sentenced to six years in prison by the Andizhan regional court. She was also charged with defamation, allegedly following a request by a teacher in Andizhan, and following a second trial on 7 May 2007 was found guilty and sentenced to a fine. Original reports had alleged that she had been given an additional five-year prison sentence; however, the authorities issued an official statement denying this. AI considered Gulbahor Turaeva to be a prisoner of conscience, detained solely for carrying out her human rights work, and called for her immediate and unconditional release. At the time of her detention she was accompanied by her nine-year-old son, who reportedly spent one night in detention with her. Gulbahor Turaeva’s supporters claimed that the literature she was carrying did not contain calls for the violent overthrow of the constitutional system. They also claimed that it was difficult to know which materials were banned in Uzbekistan since there was no official published list of banned publications. Umida Niazova had been detained on 22 January 2007 in the south-east of the country, near the border with Kyrgyzstan and later transferred to the pre-trial detention facility in Tashkent prison. She was due to meet her lawyer that day, in Tashkent, in order to collect her laptop and passport which had been confiscated from her in December 2006 by police who detained her for nine hours as she returned from a human rights seminar in Kyrgyzstan. At that time, no criminal charges were brought but she had to sign an undertaking not to leave the country and to cooperate with prosecutors in their investigation into possible offences committed by her, namely possession of anti-state materials on her laptop computer. Her laptop was sent for expert examination to establish whether any materials stored on it were of a "subversive or extremist" nature. Some of the materials contained on the laptop were said to be reports by HRW, namely its published report on the Andizhan mass killings in May 2005. Umida Niazova was working for HRW’s office in Tashkent as a translator. She had previously worked for the international freedom of expression NGOs, Internews and Freedom House. On 28 January Umida Niazova was charged under Article 223 of the Uzbekistani Criminal Code for illegally crossing the Uzbekistani border and under Article 246 for smuggling literature of a "subversive" and "extremist" nature into the country. Amnesty International Gulbahor Turaeva Gulbahor Turaeva worked as a forensic pathologist in Andizhan. During the Andizhan events, she reported to human rights organizations and foreign media that she had seen hundreds of dead bodies in makeshift morgues – figures repudiated by the authorities. She was reportedly involved in compiling an unofficial list of those killed. She became a human rights AI Index: EUR 01/010/2007