Imprisoned Agzam Turgunov seriously sick.

Uznews.net – The condition of the imprisoned leader of the Mazlum human rights organisation and a member of the Erk party’s central committee, Agzam Turgunov, has seriously aggravated. The rights activist has lost flesh very much to weight only 40 kg.

Agzam Turgunov’s son, Behzod, said that during his last visit to his father in prison he was stunned by his father’s look. “My father lost a lot of weight and weighs only 40 kg now. It is just painful to look at him,” said Behzod.

Despite severe aggravation of his level of health, the rights activist continues to work at a brick plant together with other inmates in Karshi.

Turgunov’s son said that the prison administration had repeatedly ignored the rights activists’ complaints about his health and requests to provide him with medical consultation and treatment.

Turgunov was detained on 11 July 2008 in Karakalpakstan, where he as a legal representative was defending the interests of a side in a civil case. Then the defendant turned to law enforcement bodies with the statement that the claimant, Hamza Salayev, and his public defender, Turgunov, were extorting money from him.

The claimant and the rights activist were detained when they were receiving money that the defendant agreed to pay to settle the case out of court. Based on this accusation, a court in the Karakalpak town of Mangit on 13 July issued a sanction to arrest the human rights activist and the claimant.

A Human Rights Watch representative in Uzbekistan, Igor Vorontsov, immediately after the detention of the rights activist assumed that the authorities, who were dissatisfied by the rights advocate’s activities, decided to neutralize him in this well-tried method.

The rights activist’s lawyer, Rustam Tulyaganov, said that the investigation and the consideration of his client’s case were carried out with a number of violations. Probably, the worst of those violations was the torture of Turgunov with boiling water that an investigator from the Nukus interior department inflicted on him. During one of the interrogations, the investigator just poured boiling water on the rights activist’s head and back.

Later the investigating body accused Turgunov of scalding himself with boiling water. The court accepted this accusation despite the fact that the medical examination that the lawyer demanded was conducted two months later when the wounds on the rights advocate’s back almost healed.

On 23 October 2008, the Mangit criminal court sentenced Turgunov to 10 years in prison. One and half months later, the Nukus city criminal court of appeal upheld the decision and Turgunov was moved from the notorious Zhaslyk prison to the conventional prison in Karshi.

Turgunov is not the only Uzbek rights advocate who found himself behind bars for his active civil position and helping people to fight the police system.

According to Human Rights Watch, at least ten other rights activists and journalists, who were detained following the Andijon events in 2005, still remain in custody.

These include Azam Farmonov, Alisher Karamatov, Jamshid Karimov, Norboy Holjigitov, Abdusattar Irzayev, Habibulla Okpulatov, Nasim Isakov, Rasul Hudoynazarov, Yuldash Rasulov and Salijon Abdurahmanov.

Uznews.net