This statement was originally published on hrw.org on 14 August 2017.
Erkin Musaev, a United Nations employee and former government official, tortured and unjustly jailed for 11 years in Uzbekistan, was finally freed on August 11, 2017, according to his family, Human Rights Watch said today. Musaev had been imprisoned since 2006 and was granted early release on orders of President Shavkat Mirziyoyev, the family said.
Musaev is the fifth political prisoner released since Mirziyoyev became acting president in September 2016, following the death of the long-time authoritarian leader Islam Karimov in August. During his campaign, Mirziyoyev promised increased accountability to citizens, and acknowledged the lack of reform in key aspects of Uzbekistan's society, including the economy and the criminal justice system.
Musaev, now 50, was a UN employee and a former Uzbek government official in the Defense Ministry's foreign trade department. He was involved in international cooperation programs with Western governments, including the US and the EU, for which authorities later accused him of espionage.
Musaev participated in a US government-sponsored exchange program in the mid-1990s, and in the late-1990s worked as a diplomat for the Uzbek government in Brussels. He later worked in Uzbekistan as a project manager for the UN Development Program's "Border Management in Central Asia" project.
A joint letter from the UN special rapporteur on torture and the head of the UN Working Group on Arbitrary Detention to then-President Karimov said that one beating by prison officials broke Musaev's jaw. Authorities also coerced him to sign a confession that he had engaged in espionage for the US, the UK, and the UN.
Authorities initially charged Musaev with high treason and sharing government secrets. On June 13, 2006, a Tashkent military court sentenced him to 15 years in prison. The day after his conviction, he was also charged with abuse of power and neglect of duty, and another year was added to his sentence. In the ensuing years, Musaev's relatives reported to journalists and US embassy officials that Uzbek authorities continued to periodically torture him, including one episode in which he was beaten so badly after refusing to provide false testimony that he was hospitalized as a result of significant blood loss. A court later tried and convicted him in another case in which he had been originally called as a witness, adding four years to his sentence.
In May 2008, the UN Working Group on Arbitrary Detention held that Musaev's imprisonment was "arbitrary", and in contravention of several international treaties to which Uzbekistan is a party. By February 2011, authorities had transferred Musaev to a high security prison in Navoi province and his body showed signs of burns and other wounds.