DUSHANBE, December 27, 2012, Asia-Plus — An officer from the Interior Ministry’s office in Sughd province has go a jail term for torture.
The Khujand city court sentenced Khusrav Niyozqulov, the operative agent, criminal investigation squad at the Sughd police directorate, to one year in prison on December 26. The sentence followed his conviction on the charge of torture.
Judge Jourakhon Rahmonov, who presided over the trial, says Niyozqulov will serve his term in a minimum-security penal colony.
In June this year, a 20-year-old M.Sh. was detained by Niyozqulov and another police officer on suspicion of spreading porno DVDs, said the judge. They reportedly held him in the police duty office the whole day. The detainee was allegedly beaten in order to make him confess. The results of the forensic medical examination have shown that his kidneys were badly beaten.
It is the second verdict that found a police officer guilty of torture. The first such a verdict was passed by a court in the Yovon district, Khatlon province last September.
On September 12, 2012, the police inspector Masharaf Aliyev was sentenced to seven years imprisonment for torturing and ill-treating a 17-year-old boy on April 27, 2012. This was the first time an official was found guilty and sentenced under the new article in the Criminal Code criminalizing torture introduced in March 2012.
