DUSHANBE, May 23, 2013, Asia-Plus – Prison inmates Sunatullo Rizoyev and Sadriddin Toshev will not be transported from Khujand to Dushanbe for testifying in court over the death of prison inmate Hamza Ikromzoda.
“We have lodged an appropriate application, asking to summon inmates Rizoyev and Toshev as witnesses, but our application has been refused,” Ms. Gulchehra Kholmatova, the defense lawyer of the injured party, told Asia-Plus in an interview.
“To-date, seven inmates from Dushanbe’s pretrial detention center # 1 have been cross-examined and many of them said that Hamza Ikromzoda was severely beaten before his death,” the lawyer noted.
We will recall that prison warden Mahmoud Ismoilov faces the trial over inmate’s death. He is charged with exceeding powers (Article 316 (3) of Tajikistan’s Penal Code) entailing the death of prison inmate Hamza Ikromzoda.
The trial began at Dushanbe’s pretrial detention center # 1 on May 15. The trial is being held behind closed doors.
Criminal proceedings have also been instituted against three colleagues of Ismoilov, including Rustam Toshtemirov, Sherafgan Safarov and Narzullo Afghonov, but the preliminary investigation into their case is still going on.
Hamza Ikromzoda, 27, died at Dushanbe’s penal colony # 1 on September 20, 2012. In 2010, Ikromzoda was sentenced to 11 years of imprisonment for robbery.
His relatives claim that he was tortured. They say his body carried traces of torture, including burns caused by a heated iron.
Tajik authorities, however, denied these allegations. They maintained that Ikromzoda committed suicide by hanging and that the marks on his body were caused by desperate attempts to revive him after he had been found.
Lawyers for the family said on October 24, 2012 that they were told by the prosecutor-general”s office that the autopsy proved that Ikromzoda had hanged himself. According to them, they were asked to sign papers prohibiting them from making the autopsy results public.
Ikromzoda”s former cellmate, Saidali Qazoqov, told a press conference in Dushanbe on October 8, 2012 that abuse by prison authorities was a widespread practice. He said that the only way inmates could avoid mistreatment was to get their relatives to pay bribes of $200- $500 to prison officials.
In early October last year, Tajik human rights organizations urged the government to thoroughly investigate Ikromzoda”s death, listing six other suspicious deaths in custody.
