Journalist Ali Feruz, who for months faced the prospect of deportation from Russia to Uzbekistan, has arrived in Germany after Moscow court rulings allowed him to leave for a third country.
The flight to Frankfurt on February 15 ended a tense six-month ordeal for Feruz, who had been held in a Russian immigration detention center since August 2017 and feared he could be tortured or worse if sent to Uzbekistan.
Feruz, a pen name for Hudoberdi Nurmatov, was born in Soviet Russia in 1986 but moved to Uzbekistan and took Uzbek citizenship at the age of 17.
He fled Uzbekistan in 2008, saying he had been detained and tortured by the security services in the Central Asian country.
Moscow's Basmanny district court in October upheld a decision by immigration authorities to deny Feruz political asylum, saying he had failed to prove he faced danger if returned to Uzbekistan.
In November, the court ruled that Feruz had been working illegally in Russia as a correspondent for Novaya Gazeta and ordered him deported.
His plight sparked an international outcry, with human rights groups among others urging Russia not to deport him.
The Basmanny court suspended the order after an August ruling by the European Court of Human Rights that Feruz should not be deported until it could examine the case.
Russian court decisions in February paved the way for him to leave Russia for a country other than Uzbekistan.
Uzbek President Shavkat Mirziyoev has conducted reforms since he came to power following the death of longtime autocratic leader Islam Karimov in 2016, but serious concerns about human rights persist.
An Amnesty International report published months before Karimov's death said that "torture is rife" in Uzbekistan.
In October, Human Rights Watch said that Uzbek authorities had taken "some positive steps" during Mirziyoev’s first year in office and called for "sustainable" improvements.
In November, Mirziyoev signed a decree prohibiting the courts from using evidence obtained through torture.
