TASHKENT, Uzbekistan (AP) An anti-death penalty group called Monday on Uzbek President Islam Karimov to place a moratorium on capital punishment, launching a campaign to raise awareness about the practice in this Central Asian nation that has drawn international criticism.

In an open letter, Mothers Against the Death Penalty and Torture pleaded with Karimov to suspend the death penalty on religious and moral grounds, also arguing that it doesn't deter crime and that there is no chance for a pardon if the person is later found innocent.

Tamara Chikunova, head of the group, also decried the way executions are carried out in Uzbekistan, where they are still treated as a state secret as in Soviet times.

Families aren't allowed a last meeting with their convicted relatives, and aren't told when they are executed or where they are buried. 

<It's torture against us for life,> Chikunova said at a news conference marking the start of the campaign.

Uzbekistan has faced repeated international criticism for human rights violations in its justice system.

Last month, Uzbekistan's high court confirmed the death sentence against Iskander Khudayberganov, whose case has drawn attention because of allegations he was tortured into confessing. The U.N. special envoy for torture visited the country last year and found that torture was <systematic> in Uzbek prisons.

In July, the U.N. Human Rights Committee said Uzbek authorities committed a <grave breach> of an international accord allowing individuals to lodge complaints with the U.N. body, by proceeding with the executions of six men  whose complaints of not receiving fair trials were still pending before the committee.

The chairman in office of the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe, Netherlands Foreign Minister Jaap de Hoop Scheffer, said he also urged Karimov to put a moratorium on the death penalty during a July meeting in the Uzbek capital Tashkent.

At the time, Foreign Minister Sadyk Safayev said he wouldn't be able to give an immediate answer but noted that capital punishment didn't violate international law.

About 200 people are executed in Uzbekistan every year, according to human rights groups. The government refuses to release figures on executions, which are carried out by shooting.

On Monday, no spokesman could be immediately reached in the president's office to comment on the mothers' group letter.

At the news conference, parents of death row inmates sobbed as Chikunova recounted cases of corruption and torture to gain confessions.

Basharad Yeshova said she last saw her son Ulugbek in 2001, and since then has received conflicting information about where he is imprisoned and isn't even sure if he's still alive. He was sentenced to death at age 18 in 1993