Amnesty International criticizes death penalty practices in Tajikistan

Sep 30, 2002

TASHKENT, Uzbekistan - Amnesty International strongly criticized Tajikistan for its death penalty practices, saying in a report Monday that the country sentences prisoners to death without fair trials in an environment of secrecy where families aren't even told that their convicted relatives have been executed.

 The human rights group said the Soviet-era practice of treating death penalties as a state secret had prevented it from getting full information on the situation in Tajikistan, but that it was able to confirm 29 death sentences for the first half of this year and 74 in 2001.

 "The secrecy surrounding all aspects of the death penalty, the cruel and random way in which it is applied and the failures of the criminal justice system mean that Tajikistan is violating internationally guaranteed human rights," Amnesty International wrote in its report.

 Families of prisoners aren't informed when requests for clemency are turned down until the convicts have been moved to death row, and then they aren't given the chance to visit their relatives before execution by shooting, Amnesty said. The country's legal code is also largely unchanged from Soviet times, when it was heavily biased in favor of prosecutors.

 With Tajikistan's greater international profile because of its strategic significance in the anti-terror campaign in neighboring Afghanistan ( news - web sites), the country had taken some steps in the area of human rights, the report said.

 However, a governmental commission that met for the first time in June to address the country's compliance with international human rights accords has so far failed to substantially address the death penalty issue, Amnesty said, noting that four prisoners were executed while their cases were being examined by the commission.