September 28, 2015, exactly 2 years ago, Buzurgmehr Yurov was detained by Tajik security forces. Knowing his principles, fearlessness, uncompromising attitude and feeling a danger in case of his participation in the case of members of the Islamic Revival Party of Tajikistan (IRPT), the Ministry of Internal Affairs (MIA) and the Prosecutor General’s Office brought against Buzurgmehr several false accusations of fraud and forgery of documents.
At the beginning of the investigation, the investigators, with the consent of the minister of the Ministry of Internal Affairs and the attorney general, attempted to incline Buzurgmehr to the deal. As a result of the transaction, Buzurgmehr would remain at large and refuse to protect his customers. But, the principles of Buzurgmehr and his belief in the ultimate victory of justice prevailed, and he refused the deal. Thus, he became a victim of inhuman treatment, and his life is under serious threat.
And all these two years he was held in pre-trial detention center No. 1 in Dushanbe. In the pre-trial detention center, where access is severely restricted not only for ordinary citizens who are trying to visit their relatives or friends, but also for representatives of professions directly related to human rights activities.
In the pre-trial detention center, where torture and humiliation of human dignity became commonplace. In the pre-trial detention center, where there is a special camera with the so-called “LG” device, through which detainees are tortured with electric current.
In the pre-trial detention center, where for the fact that you did not greet the guards, the whole cell is punished. In the pre-trial detention center, where inhuman conditions, tightness, stuffiness, bedbugs and cockroaches, and complete unsanitary conditions.
In the pre-trial detention center, where medical assistance will be provided only when you are dying. It is a pre-trial detention center No. 1 of Dushanbe city, subordinated to the Ministry of Justice. This is the pre-trial detention center where Tajik Ombudsman Zarif Alizoda never finds violations, and where no one complains about anything. This is the detention center, which the prosecutor oversees the places of detention of the accused and suspects constantly and finds everything normal.
Yesterday, on September 27, 2017, it became known that Buzurgmehr Yorov had been subjected to torture, insults and degrading treatment for a long time. As a result, he even got into the medical center of the detention center. Torture and insults continue to this day. When he met his mother, his appearance was exhausted. Eyes red from severe beatings on the head. Repeatedly he was placed for various reasons for long periods in the punishment cell. He and his cellmates were also repeatedly subjected to unlawful punishments in the form of a long standing in the nude in the cell and even in the detention center’s corridor. Almost every day he is beaten, insulted and humiliated. All these actions occur with the knowledge and approval of the head of the detention center Sadriddin Sharipov, the nephew of Izatullo Sharipov, who is known in his turn as Zorro, and is the Deputy Minister of Justice and the head of the Prisons Department of the Republic of Tajikistan.
Defects, humiliations, insults are common in the detention center in Tajikistan, but such actions against political prisoners are more cruel. Because of the restriction of relatives’ access to prisoners, information is scarce. Many lawyers and relatives of detainees under threat of arrest or even more severe punishment do not share information about torture in closed institutions of Tajikistan, such as pre-trial detention centers, detention facilities, Organised Crime Control Burea, etc.
It was also the case with Buzurgmehr Yurov. He was tortured not today or yesterday, but TWO YEARS ago. After his arrest, the next day, we brought him clothes from the house, and took away the one in which he was at the time of his arrest. The shirt was covered in blood. The fact that he was severely beaten, his cellmates said, who were transferred to my cell.
It is the traces of beatings and torture that most likely compelled the Tajik judiciary to hold court hearings in closed custody in the detention center building. Such practice of judicial bodies of Tajikistan is inadmissible and contradicts to such principles of criminal and international law as publicity of the trial, the presumption of innocence and the principle of legality.
We have already sent various appeals to international human rights organizations, various institutions and structures interested in this matter, as well as to the Coalition of Civil Society against Torture and Lawlessness in Tajikistan.
We hope that they will not submit to the lies of the official authorities about the non-use of torture against Buzurgmehr Yorov, and will meet with him. This must be done quickly and insistently, for, as Buzurgmehr said: “Their goal is my physical destruction, it is unlikely that I will leave this place alive.”
Jamshed Yorov
Hosiyat Yorova
