DUSHANBE, January 9, 2013, Asia-Plus — Three penitentiary officials have been prosecuted over the death of an inmate of Dushanbe’s penal colony # 1, Tajik Prosecutor- General Sherkhon Salimzoda told reporters on January 9.
The chief prosecutor, however, refrained from naming those officials. He just noted that criminal proceedings had been instituted under the provisions of two articles of Tajikistan’s Penal Code: negligence and exceeding powers.
Salimzoda noted that the prosecutor’s offices received 22 complaints about torture in 2012. “The complaints were lodged mainly against police officers and nine criminal proceedings were instituted against ten law enforcement officers over torture use last year,” the chief prosecutor said.
We will recall that Hamza Ikromzoda, 27, died in Dushanbe’s penal colony # 1 on September 20, 2012.
His relatives claim that he was tortured. They say his body carried traces of torture, including burns caused by a heated iron.
Tajik authorities deny these allegations. They maintain 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 say they were told by the prosecutor-general”s office on October 23 that the autopsy proved that Ikromzoda had hanged himself. The lawyers say 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.
