In Turkmenistan, prisoners complain about prison conditions

“Former Head of special school No.2 in Kerki, 39-year-old Alisher Mukhametgulyev, sentenced to 23 years on a number of charges, is in critical condition at “Ovadan-depe” prison,” Turkmen.news reports.

A.Mukhametgulyev is one of a dozen people convicted in 2017, mainly teachers, who are suspected of having connections with the Hizmet movement of the Turkish religious preacher Fethullah Gulen. Previously, at least two convicts (an English teacher Eziz Khudaiberdyev and entrepreneur Akmurat Soyunov) died in “Ovadan-depe” prison under unclear circumstances.

Sources of Turkmen.news reported that A. Mukhametgulyev complains of constant acute pain in the abdomen. E. Khudaiberdyev and A. Soyunov had the same symptoms, but neither the institution’s administration nor the prison’s medical service took any measures to alleviate the suffering of the prisoner. The conditions in the prison, especially in the blocks where the so-called “Wahhabis” and “Gulenists” are kept, are terrible: poor nutrition, overcrowding and the absence of any medications, which leads to the death of quite young people.

“We fear that such inaction and indifference to the health of Alisher Mukhametgulyev could lead to his death as well,” the sources said. “The teacher urgently needs medical aid, and maybe not only him.”

In Turkmenistan, the “hunt” for the so-called followers of Fethullah Gulen began after a failed military coup in Turkey in July 2016. During several months, dozens of people were arrested in Ashgabat, Turkmenabad, and other cities: entrepreneurs, government officials, and school teachers. They all had one thing in common: they studied at the Turkmen-Turkish educational institutions of the country. The courts in all cases were held behind closed doors, and the defendants received longer sentences on the same charges as Alisher Mukhametgulyev.

For example, on February 8, 2017, the city court of Ashgabat (in fact, the process took place in the building of the pre-trial detention center of the Police Department) sentenced a group of 18 people for a total of 333 years. In November of the same year, the UN Working group recognized their arrest and detention as unfounded, demanding the Turkmen authorities to release them immediately.