A 16-year-old teenager has been tortured to death in a police department in Syrdarya Region’s Syrdarya District, Ezgulik has reported.

“On 25 January this year, an investigator of the Syrdarya District interior department in Syrdarya Region, Davron Hayitov, mercilessly tortured a 16-year-old teenager accused of theft,” said today’s press release issued by the Ezgulik human rights society of Uzbekistan.

According to evidence received by Ezgulik, the police officer who used his fists on the accused is under arrest now and an investigation is underway.

Beaten within inch of life

If sanctions were used against the policeman from Syrdarya, it is unknown yet how the Uzbek Interior Ministry will treat police officers from Tashkent’s Yunusabad District, who have beaten up 30-year-old Jamshid Sharofutdinov on the street.

Sharofutdinov’s father said that on 28 November

A major called Furkat, senior lieutenant Ahmad Nurmurodov and some Shuhrat tied up Jamshid, kicked him in his kidneys and genitals”"

Jamshid Sharofutdinov's father

last year, at about 8 o’clock in the evening, police officers stopped his son when he was walking in a street with his girlfriend and asked him to produce his documents.

The conversation between Sharofutdinov ended in the police officers’ hand-cuffing of the young man “without any reasons”, and taking him to the Yunusabad District interior department.

“A major called Furkat, senior lieutenant Ahmad Nurmurodov and some Shuhrat tied up Jamshid, kicked him in his kidneys and genitals,” Ezgulik reported.

According to Jamshid’s father, when his son fainted and there was a threat of the detainee’s death because of beating, the policemen did not call an ambulance, but drew up a report saying Sharofutdinov “bid defiance” to law-enforcement officers.

Then they applied to the prosecutor’s office where a criminal case was launched against Sharofutdinov.

An ambulance was called only on 1 December. It carried the beaten up young man to the traumatic surgery department of Tashkent’s Medical Academy from where he was transferred to an intensive care unit.

Measures should be taken...

Ezgulik has urged the Uzbek Prosecutor-General’s Office to give an explanation of the case and demanded that the Interior Ministry take appropriate measures against its officers.

In Uzbekistan, violence and torture are often used against citizens, especially young men, detained by police.

“At the same time, for such crimes law-enforcement officers are not often brought to account. Even if someone is punished, the Interior Ministry hides this kind of case as a rule,” the head of the Initiative Group of Independent Human Rights Activists of Uzbekistan, Surat Ikramov, said.

In Ikromov’s opinion, every case of policemen’s use of fists and how those policemen are punished should be publicised and reported.

Then other policemen “will think over and behave towards citizens in line with law.”

“The Interior Ministry should conduct serious educational work in its subdivisions, but it is not,” Ikromov said.

Uznews.net