AP News, December 6th, 2007
Russian authorities deported an Uzbek man wanted on charges of religious extremism despite objections from the European human rights court that he may be subjected to torture in Uzbekistan, rights advocates said Thursday.
Abdugani Kamaliyev was flown Wednesday from the central city of Tyumen to the Uzbek capital, Tashkent, said Yelena Ryabinina of the rights organization Civic Assistance.
Kamaliyev, 49, was sent to Uzbekistan despite a request from the Strasbourg-based European Court of Human Rights not to extradite him without a court hearing, Ryabinina said.
"This is a demonstrative disregard of Russia's international commitments," she said.
Ryabinina said the charges against Kamaliyev were trumped up, and expressed fear that he would be subjected to torture and may not receive a fair trial.
The Tyumen prosecutor's office confirmed that Kamaliyev, who was arrested Nov. 23, had been deported and said it was considering a complaint from Civic Assistance over the legality of his extradition.
Kamaliyev fled his native Uzbekistan in 1997 as President Islam Karimov launched a crackdown on the practice of Islam outside state-controlled institutions under the pretext of fighting extremism. Human rights groups say thousands of people have been jailed since then on allegations of extremism.
Kamaliyev, who became a Russian citizen in 2000, has been sought by Uzbek authorities since 1999 on charges of religious extremism, Ryabinina said. Six years later, he was detained in Tyumen, a city about 1,000 miles east of Moscow, at the request of Uzbek authorities. He was released several months later.
Authorities later accused Kamaliyev of getting his passport illegally, Ryabinina said.
She said Kamaliyev's expulsion was one of several cases where Russian authorities have stripped people of their citizenship to allow their extradition, circumventing the constitutional ban on the extradition of citizens.
Svetlana Gannushkina, who heads Civic Assistance, said Russian officials appear to pay little attention to the constitution when it comes to granting extradition requests from friendly autocratic regimes in oil- and natural gas-rich Central Asia.
Kamaliyev was the second person in just over a year extradited by Russia to Uzbekistan in defiance of a ruling by the European human rights court.
Britain sought the extradition of Alexander Lugovoi, identified as a suspect in the radiation poisoning death in London of Kremlin critic Alexander Litvinenko, in July. Russian authorities refused, citing the constitutional ban on the extradition of citizens.
Ryabinina said at least six Uzbek men have been abducted by the Russian security service and secretly handed over to Uzbekistan in recent years, later resurfacing in Uzbek jails.
