Arrest Law Reform Fails to Guarantee Suspects' Rights

Although courts in Uzbekistan became responsible for approving arrest warrants earlier this year, little seems to have changed in practice. NBCentralAsia observers say judges appear unwilling to exercise even a modicum of independence.



A conference in the capital Tashkent in late June, timed to coincide with the 60th anniversary of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, looked at the principle of habeas corpus, according to which a detained person has the right to appear in court for a fair review of whether they should be in custody. The right is enshrined in the Convention on Civil and Political Rights, which Uzbekistan ratified in 1996.



Uzbek participants at the event noted that under a reform instituted earlier this year, Uzbekistan transferred the right to sanction arrests from the prosecution service to the courts. Prosecutors in this country have traditionally enjoyed extensive powers to arrest, investigate and bring suspects to trial, without external scrutiny of whether detention is justified.



Yet human rights practitioners and activists say they have seen little sign of improvement in recent months.



Surat Ikramov, head of the Initiative Group of Independent Human Rights Activists of Uzbekistan, based in Tashkent, said the situation had actually got worse.



Ikramov cited a recent case where people were arrested and charged with involvement in extremist groups in the southwestern town of Shahrisabz.



“The National Security Service calls a young man in for an interview, then he’s taken before a judge who immediately sanctions ten days detention for hooliganism. In the course of those ten days, the detainee is accused of extremist activity,” he said.



Ruhiddin Komilov, a practicing lawyer in Tashkent, says that in the six months that the habeas corpus law has been in existence, he has not heard of a single case where a court has ordered a detainee to be released.



“In practice, judges merely rubber-stamp the prosecutor’s application for detention,” he said.



Komilov believes the new law may in some cases prejudice an individual’s position, if the same judge sanctions the initial arrest and then later tries the case. This is because no attempt has been made to separate the two judicial functions, a deficiency which he said runs counter to the very principle of habeas corpus.



(NBCentralAsia is an IWPR-funded project to create a multilingual news analysis and comment service for Central Asia, drawing on the expertise of a broad range of political observers across the region. The project ran from August 2006 to September 2007, covering all five regional states. With new funding, the service is resuming, covering only Uzbekistan and Turkmenistan for the moment.)