DUSHANBE, June 6, 2011, Asia-Plus — Senior operative agents with the Sino-1 police station, Abdurahmon Yoqubov and Qodir Hasanov, who are charged with beating Dushanbe resident to death, have partially admitted guilt.
The trial of former Dushanbe policemen Yoqubov and Hasanov – who were dismissed from their jobs after they were charge – opened on June 3, but it was immediately adjourned until June 6 as the prosecutor did not show up in the courtroom. We will recall that Yoqubov and Hasanov were brought to trial for their alleged role in the death of Safarali Sangov.
Both defendants noted that officers from the Sino-1 police station in late February received information that Safarali Sangov, 37, is engaged in drug trafficking. According to them, they and two other officers from Sino-1 police station – Salim Davlatov and Jamshed Safarov – participated in arrest of Sangov on March 1. “The suspect resisted the arrest and we were forced to handcuff him,” Yoqubov and Hasanov said.
According to them, they took Safarali Sangov to the police station and when they were taking him to the second floor of the building, he allegedly jumped off. “We took him to the second floor and when we just opened the office door he knocked his head against the wall twice,” they noted. “When we picked up him from the floor and made him sit down he was unconscious. After that we called ambulance and they took him to hospital.”
In case of making decision to take detainee to police station, police officers take responsibility safety, health and life of detainee.
According to the defendants, Sangov was suspected of drug trafficking and 420 grams of hashish were found n his jacket.
We will recall that Safarali Sangov died on March 5 in the National Medical Center in Dushanbe several days after he was beaten and taken from his house by plainclothes officers.
His wife, Sarvinoz Hikmatova, said that on March 1, a group of men in civilian clothes, who were evidently from a police station in Dushanbe”s Sino district, entered their house, beat her husband, and took him away. She found him later in a coma in the resuscitation department of the National Medical Center.
Police tried to depict the death as a suicide. Police said in March that Sangov, who they suspected of drug pushing, tried to commit suicide by jumping out of the second-floor window during his interrogation at the police station. Interior Ministry spokesperson Mahmadullo Asadulloyev said the police officers suspected Sangov was in possession of drugs. He added that Sangov had been arrested previously for crimes in Russia and Tajikistan.
Sangov”s relatives acknowledged he was jailed in Russia in 1998 for five years for drug-related crimes. But they also say that when he returned home he went into business and opened a small supermarket.
Amnesty International and Tajikistan’s Bureau on Human Rights and Rule of Law are concerned about allegations that Safarali Sangov died as a result of torture and ill-treatment by the Sino-1 police station and that witnesses present during his arrest on March 1 were beaten. In statement released on March 17, the organizations urge the authorities to conduct an immediate, thorough, impartial and independent investigation into these allegations, to ensure that the results are made public and that those suspected of being responsible are brought to justice, in line with Tajikistan’s obligations as a party to the United Nations Convention Against Torture and Other Cruel, Inhuman or Degrading Treatment or Punishment.
