Watchdog

An Uzbek blogger who spent weeks in involuntary psychiatric care after extensively covering alleged corruption and abuse among politicians has fled the country.

Nafosat Olloshukurova, known on Facebook as Shabnam Olloshukurova, told RFE/RL in a telephone interview on January 20 that she planned to ask for political asylum in an unnamed Western state.

In September, Olloshukurova was put under administrative arrest in the western Khorezm region for alleged violations including petty hooliganism and participating in unauthorized assemblies.

She had reportedly been documenting a march by a journalist and poet to petition the authorities to drop a case against him.

Olloshukurova told RFE/RL that police tortured her and threatened to rape her with a bottle in an attempt to force her to testify that exiled opposition figures were behind the march.

Days after she began serving her sentence, a court ordered that Olloshukurova be placed in a regional psychiatric center, where she was kept incommunicado for almost three months.

Olloshukurova, who was released in late December, said she had to leave Uzbekistan after the local authorities threatened to register her at a psychiatric clinic as an unstable person.

She expressed thanks to the U.S. Embassy in Tashkent; the head of the Ezgulik human rights group, Abdurakhman Tashanov; and lawyer Umid Davletov for their support.

Olloshukurova's 3-year-old twin daughters are staying with the blogger's mother in Tashkent.

The Committee to Protect Journalists said in October that the Uzbek authorities "should not resort to the use of totalitarian practices like forced confinement of journalists in a psychiatric ward."

BISHKEK -- A Bishkek court has started a hearing into a libel lawsuit filed against RFE/RL's Kyrgyz Service, locally known as Azattyk, its correspondent Ali Toktakunov, and the news site Kloop by the former deputy chief of the customs service, Raimbek Matraimov, and his relatives, following an alleged corruption scandal exposed by the media outlets.

The plaintiffs' lawsuit also targets another independent news website, 24.kg, which published a summary of the joint media investigation.

The Sverdlov district court in Bishkek began hearing the case on January 20 and quickly adjourned it until January 29, after the plaintiffs' lawyers asked for more time for talks of a possible settlement, namely the publication of an official rebuttal refuting the findings of the joint investigation.

Lawyers for RFE/RL's Kyrgyz Service and Kloop have rejected such a move, but they offered the plaintiffs an opportunity to discuss the investigation on programs of the media outlets.

A lawyer for 24.kg, meanwhile, said that his client was ready to discuss the settlement conditions with the plaintiffs.

The lawsuit was filed by Matraimov, his brother, lawmaker Iskender Matraimov, Minovar Jumaeva, Uulkan Turgunova, and the Ismail Matraimov Public Foundation against Toktakunov and the media outlets, who, according to the plaintiffs, damaged their "honor, dignity, and business reputations."

The court has said the plaintiffs are demanding 10 million soms ($143,150) from Toktakunov, 22.5 million soms ($323,100) from RFE/RL's Kyrgyz Service, 12.5 million soms ($179,000) from Kloop, and 15 million soms ($215,000) from 24.kg as compensation for the alleged damages.

In November, the Kyrgyz Prosecutor-General's Office launched a probe to verify information revealed in the joint journalistic investigation.

The report showed that a 37-year-old Uyghur businessman from China's northwestern region of Xinjiang, Aierken Saimaiti, secretly provided reporters with documents demonstrating how hundreds of millions of dollars were moved out of Kyrgyzstan, much of it via a business network led by Khabibula Abdukadyr, a secretive Chinese-born Uyghur with a Kazakh passport.

The chief of Kyrgyzstan's financial police has said since then that the amount of cash illegally funneled out of the country is closer to $1 billion.

The joint investigation also uncovered video footage showing Abdukadyr sitting in the second row at President Sooronbai Jeenbekov's inauguration in November 2017. The video shows Abdukadyr sitting next to the president's brother, Kyrgyz Ambassador to Ukraine Jusupbek Sharipov.

Saimaiti, who was shot dead in Istanbul on November 10, alleged that former senior official Raimbek Matraimov, while serving as deputy customs chief, was instrumental in providing cover for the Abdukadyr network's cargo empire in the region.

The investigation also found that Matraimov's wife, Turgunova, is a joint investor in a Dubai property development with a company controlled by Abdukadyr.

Matraimov and his brother Iskender have denied all accusations of wrongdoing by the former customs official.

Saimaiti told reporters prior to his death that, in order to protect himself, he had applied for Turkish citizenship and expected to receive it on November 14. He said he planned to turn over more financial documents to reporters after that.

However, he was shot dead at a cafe in Istanbul. Turkish police have made several arrests in the case, though details of the suspects' motives and potential contacts remain murky. Turkish police have made no official statements on the case.

The Kyrgyz Prosecutor-General's Office said on November 22 that it had launched a probe to verify information revealed in the joint investigation, specifically that "unknown persons repeatedly threatened [Saimaiti] with murder, which forced him to flee to the Republic of Turkey."