Appeal for Uzbek journalist

A group of journalists in Uzbekistan has appealed to the country's president to release a local journalist and human rights activist convicted of sexual offences.

In a letter, the group said Ruslan Sharipov was targeted because he was a courageous and independent journalist.

He has been sentenced to five-and-a-half years in prison for sodomy and running a brothel.

But in the letter the journalists said the closed trial in the Uzbek capital Tashkent failed to prove his guilt.

The New York-based group, Human Rights Watch, has already expressed concern that Ruslan Sharipov's statements were coerced, and has condemned his imprisonment as an effort to suppress free speech in Uzbekistan.

From the newsroom of the BBC World Service