Uzbekistan 'prison torture' claim

By Natalie Antelava
BBC Central Asia correspondent

President Karimov is seeking election for a fourth time

A leading human rights group has called on the United Nations to condemn publicly and bring an end to the use of torture in Uzbekistan.

Human Rights Watch (HRW) said that torture in Uzbek prisons is endemic to the criminal justice system.

The groups gives details descriptions of systematic torture in the country.

The HRW calls come amid reports of a new wave of repression ahead of the December election, in which President Islam Karimov will seek re-election.

The 90-page report, titled 'Nowhere to Turn - Torture and Ill Treatment in Uzbekistan', has been published ahead of a meeting in Geneva of the UN Committee Against Torture.

It includes audio testimonies of victims describing a cycle of torture which starts with their detention and carries on throughout conviction.

Psychological torture

The report says that beatings with truncheons and bottles filled with water, electric shocks, sexual humiliation and threats of physical harm to relatives are the most common forms of torture.

In the past there has also been evidence that at least one prisoner was boiled to death in an Uzbek jail.

More recently, there have been reports of more sophisticated, psychological torture, especially when it comes to those who are jailed on charges of Islamic extremism.

Their number is on the rise in Uzbekistan, but human rights groups say many of them are victims of political repression.

One Uzbek woman recently told the BBC that her husband was forced to strip down and crawl naked for hours, and that prison guards urinated on him and other inmates during prayers.

Human Rights Watch is calling on the UN to pressure the authorities at the highest level to publicly condemn the use of torture in Uzbekistan.