Kyrgyz Torture Lawsuit May Set Precedent

Pavel Zlobin’s account of being picked up by police and beaten until he signed a confession is sadly unremarkable in Central Asia. However, the 37-year-old from Osh in southern Kyrgyzstan could be about to make history, as he is suing the police officers he accuses of torturing him.

Zlobin was convicted of selling drugs, but the sentence was overturned on appeal in the Supreme Court and he was found not guilty. Now he is seeking damages of around 115,000 US dollars, from the police and also from prosecutors and medics for failing to report his injuries.

After Zlobin was arrested in March 2008, he was placed in a police detention cell.

His mother Valentina Zlobina raised the alarm, asking human rights activists to intervene because her son was being tortured. The non-government group Spravodlivost (Justice) found a lawyer for the accused man, and Valentina herself appeared in the courtroom as a “public defender” – a lay person entitled to speak on behalf of a defendant under Kyrgyz law.

“My son has been convicted before for crimes he really did do, and I never defended him then,” she told Spravedlivost. “But I don’t believe he was trading in narcotics.”

In the court, Zlobin pleaded guilty as charged, but later changed this to a not guilty plea on the grounds that torture and intimidation were used to get him to sign the confession.

In a rare move, the Jalalabad city court dismissed the case against Zlobin in October 2008, ruling the prosecution’s evidence invalid as it had been “obtained in violation of procedural norms”.

Zlobin himself says his mother had dropped him off by car and he was waiting in the street for a prospective employer when he was stopped by police who asked for his ID. Because he had no papers on him, they took him to police headquarters for an identity check, and it was only when he got there that they accused him of the narcotics offence.

Investigators said two kilograms of heroin were found on him, contained in a large plastic bag.

The city court found numerous breaches of procedure had been committed at the pre-trial investigation stage. Under cross-examination, two women presented as prosecution eyewitnesses said they were not after all present when Zlobin was arrested. The two witnesses, who had initially testified against the accused man, admitted that they simple wrote down what police officers dictated to them, and that they had never met the investigator who was supposed to have taken their statements until they were confronted with him in the courtroom.

Despite these conclusive findings, and Judge Kamchybek Iliazov’s resounding verdict, the prosecution service appealed, and the case went to the next judicial level, the Jalabad regional court. In December 2008, this court annulled the not guilty verdict and sentenced Zlobin to 16 years in jail.

With Spravedlivost’s help, Valentina Zlobina wrote to Kyrgyz president Kurmanbek Bakiev, the country’s chief prosecutor, and the head of the Supreme Court, obtaining considerable media coverage in the process. In March 2009, the Supreme Court threw out Zlobin’s conviction, dismissing the investigative evidence underpinning the provincial court’s verdict as “fabricated”.

His name cleared, Zlobin and his family set about obtaining justice.

“The truth has triumphed, but we have wasted so much energy and nerves on this that my son decided to sue those who cooked up the case and tortured him during the investigation,” said Valentina.

Abdumalik Sharipov of the Spravodlivost group says the Zlobin case is a first for several reasons.

“First, they managed to win the case comprehensively. Second, human rights defenders have found an opportunity to hold investigators to account for torture; they have the Supreme Court verdict and the medical findings. And most important of all, a victim of torture wishes to fight to the finish,” he said.

The first round in the damages claim was inconclusive. The city court in Osh, also in southern Kyrgyzstan, found in Zlobin’s favour in November 2009, but awarded him total damages equivalent to just 1,200 dollars.

Neither side was happy with the result. The Jalalabad police appealed, while Zlobin’s lawyers requested that a higher court approve their full damages claim. Both appeals now go to the Osh regional court.

Aside from the compensation claim, lawyer Saidkamal Ahmedov asked Jalalabad prosecutors to launch criminal proceedings against the police accused of torturing Zlobin. They refused to do so, saying the officers had already been disciplined.

Ahmedov does not plan to let matters rest there. “We’re prepared to take it to the Supreme Court, and even the United Nations Human Rights Committee if necessary, to ensure that the police who tortured Zlobin are punished,” he said. “In addition to the necessary proof of torture, we have the Supreme Court ruling which acknowledges that Zlobin was tortured,”

Proving the use of torture in detention has never been easy in Kyrgyzstan. A specific clause outlawing the use of torture was introduced into criminal legislation in 2003, but Sharipov says there has yet to be a successful conviction for the offence. (For more on this issue, see Kyrgyzstan: Hopes for Stronger Anti-Torture Regulation.)

“We’re hoping the Zlobin case will be the first in which police are punished for torture,” said Ahmedov. “We’ve got every chance of achieving that. The only thing that’s lacking is the political will among the national leadership to make the torture ban clause start functioning."