In Uzbekistan, a lawyer told the UN special rapporteur about the tortures and bias of judges

Uzbek lawyer Sergei Mayorov distributed an appeal to Diego Garcia-Sayan, Special Rapporteur of the Office of the High Commissioner for the Independence of Judges and Lawyers. The UN representative has already held a number of meetings in Uzbekistan. He had conversations with specialists and representatives of civil society, at one of which Mayorov expressed an unpleasant point of view for the authorities, sharply contrasting with the official one.

The text of the appeal contains ten points of refutation of “that a stable political system has been created in Uzbekistan that meets the criteria of democracy, the society affirms respect for the principles of the rule of law and human rights”. This is the citation from the communiqué after the meeting of the special rapporteur with the Minister of Foreign Affairs Abdulaziz Kamilov.

Sergei Mayorov directly accused the State Security Service and the Prosecutor General of ignoring complaints and petitions. He emphasized that the lack of equality of the parties is especially evident in criminal and administrative proceedings.

“The modern trend of the investigating authorities is to declare criminal cases completely secret. This illegal form of classification gives grounds for investigators not to provide lawyers with copies of documents from the criminal case, both at the stage of the preliminary investigation and at the stage of familiarization with the materials of the criminal case,” the human rights activist notes.

According to him, the judges do not pay attention to the grossest violations of the criminal process and to the falsification of evidence by investigators, which the lawyers point to them. “So it was in the case of Arsen Aganov, who received a life sentence for the murder. The sentence was based on the self-incrimination of one of the detained and falsified evidence. The accused had an alibi at the time of the murder; it was recorded in the case file,” Mayorov emphasizes.

“In the National Security Service, the predecessor of the State Security Service, various tortures forced people to come up with crimes themselves, so that they would be tortured less. When Adylbek Yuldashev was mercilessly beaten, he confessed to espionage in favor of Turkmenistan. He said that he had allegedly handed over the map of the city of Tashkent purchased at a kiosk to an employee of the embassy,” the lawyer said. “He was mocked for a long time. Fearing for his life, he had to confess that he was informed about the Rogun hydropower plant, which was being built in neighboring Tajikistan, and the start of the construction of a gas pipeline from Turkmenistan to China.”

So the routine publications of Uzbek media have become key evidences. The bone-breakers, as Mayorov calls them, broke three ribs and brought Yuldashev to a 20-year term. “The accusation was so crazy that the Uzbek security officers (in 2018 the National Security Service) opened a criminal case on the fact of torture against Yuldashev,” Mayorov said. According to him, even this fact, reported in a supervisory appeal to the Supreme Court, did not become the basis for a review of the verdict. Thus, it is confirmed that judges are not independent in making a lawful decision.

The lawyer directly blames the judicial system. “In order to preserve their position, judges openly support the charges and agree with the position of prosecutors. The lack of independence can be traced throughout the judicial vertical: from district courts to the Supreme Court,” the human rights activist said.

The reaction of the special rapporteur to six pages of well-reasoned allegations of corruption, the infinite cruelty of the entire judicial system when the role of a helpless extras is assigned to the lawyer remains unknown.

Sergey Mayorov is one of the most famous lawyers in Uzbekistan. He is known for protecting dissidents, journalists, and civic activists.