Experts rule out Uzbek torture

By Monica Whitlock
BBC correspondent in Tashkent

A commission investigating the death in custody of an Uzbek prisoner has concluded that he committed suicide and was not tortured.

It is the first time foreign pathologists have been brought into Uzbekistan, where there have been several deaths in detention.

Uzbekistan is an ally of the US, which keeps a military base in the country.

But there is growing awkwardness over Uzbekistan's bleak record on human rights.

The man at the centre of this case was 36-year-old Andrei Shelkavenko, who died in a police station on the outskirts of Tashkent two weeks ago.

Now outsiders have been brought in once, it is possible that foreigners could investigate future deaths in detention

The police say he hanged himself using a strip of material torn from a robe.

But several witnesses felt there was something wrong - there were three other people in the room, for example, and Mr Shelkavenko's mother said she saw police beating her son in a corridor.

Some human rights activists believed that the police had strangled Mr Shelkavenko and that his body showed marks of torture.

They were so convinced that, for the first time, an international team of investigators was called in, led by an eminent Canadian pathologist, Michael Pollanen, who has worked in East Timor and Cambodia.

Mr Pollanen's team was quite clear in its conclusions.

"Our observations show no evidence that Mr Shelkavenko was maltreated, abused or tortured," it said, adding that "all examinations revealed findings compatible with hanging".

The Uzbek Government will of course be very pleased.

The recurrent issue of torture and death in detention has shone an unwelcome spotlight on internal policy here.

But the autopsy on Mr Shelkavenko does not, of course, clear up all the other questions surrounding other deaths - most famously, the case of a man who died in prison after allegedly being immersed in boiling water.

Mr Pollanen's investigation had a specific brief and no claim to reach beyond that.

The case has generated a lot of interest in Tashkent and it may set an interesting precedent.

Now outsiders have been brought in once, it is possible that foreigners could investigate future deaths in detention.