The court of Ismoili Somoni district of the capital received a lawsuit from Khasan Edgorov, who demands 400,000 somoni (about $34,000) from the Ministry of Internal Affairs of Tajikistan as compensation for torture by the police. In 2017, three law enforcement officers forced Khasan Edgorov, a resident of the city of Tursunzoda, to confess to a crime that he didn’t commit by means of torture and beatings.
According to Gulchekhra Kholmatova, head of the Legal Assistance Group of the Civil Society Coalition against Torture and Impunity in Tajikistan, the lawsuit against the Ministry of Internal Affairs of Tajikistan for moral and material damages in the amount of 400,000 somoni has been accepted into proceedings.
The Ministry of Internal Affairs of Tajikistan reported that they hadn’t received official notification of the claim for compensation for moral and material damage.
This sensational story began in November 2017, when the corpse of waiter Dmitry Karimov was discovered in a rented apartment in Tursunzoda. A month later, the Ministry of Internal Affairs released a video in which it announced the discovery of the crime in hot pursuit. Khasan Edgorov, who, according to investigators, was suspected of committing the murder, told how he stabbed Karimov several times. The video claimed that Edgorov took the victim’s personal belongings with him after the murder.
However, after 8 months, which Edgorov spent in a pre-trial detention center, he was unexpectedly released from the isolation ward. The real killer of the waiter was detained. He was identified after selling the victim’s mobile phone. Suppressed by humiliation and torture, Edgorov told reporters after his release that he was glad to be released. “I have nothing to say, I have no complaints,” he added.
Even during the investigation into the case, Edgorov’s mother-in-law, Savriniso Eshova, claimed that her son-in-law said during a meeting with his relatives that he took the blame for the crime under torture. However, neither the Prosecutor’s Office nor the court stood up for the rights of the arrested person, and he continued to sit in a pre-trial detention center, awaiting a trial.
After recovering, Edgorov turned to the Civil Society Coalition against Torture and Impunity in Tajikistan for legal assistance, where he spoke about cruel treatment and torture by police officers of the Ministry of Internal Affairs in the city of Tursunzoda. According to lawyers defending the rights of Khasan Edgorov, an additional investigation showed that there were signs of torture on Edgorov’s body. One of the lawyers, speaking on condition of anonymity, told the media that the fact of torture was confirmed by a forensic medical examination.
“He still has signs of torture on his body,” says Khasan’s mother, Sharofat Nazrikulova. “He is going to have an operation on his knees. Because of the torture, he developed osteoarthritis. In addition, after he was released, he had difficulty breathing. My son says that during the investigation he was often beaten on the head. He needs serious treatment.”
On June 17 last year, the Supreme Court of Tajikistan sentenced to various long prison terms three police officers accused of torturing Khasan Edgorov, a resident of the city of Tursunzoda. Eraj Naimov, senior investigator for especially important cases of the Criminal Investigation Department under the Ministry of Internal Affairs of Tajikistan, was sentenced to 10 years in prison. Sadi Davlatmurodzoda, senior investigator of the Criminal Investigation Department under the Ministry of Internal Affairs of the city of Tursunzoda, was sentenced to 12 years in prison. Sherali Azizov, senior detective of the village police department, was sentenced to 13 years in prison. As it was confirmed during the investigation, police officers tortured and beat Khasan Edgorov to confess to a crime that he didn’t commit.
In Tajikistan, torturing suspects and forcing them to confess is widespread. “Practically any suspect is humiliated, first morally and then physically: they use stun gun, beat on the head with books so that there are no bruises, hung at night to heating pipes, as a result of which the hands of the detainees become weak by morning,” says one of the human rights activists. “Everyone knows about it, and prosecutors, and judges, and in the office of the Ombudsman. However, the authorities don’t take any effective measures to investigate such cases, the perpetrators are not brought to justice to the fullest extent of the law, and no compensation is provided for victims of torture and cruel treatment.”
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