Activists Speak Out for Detained Uzbek Dissident

An exiled Uzbek opposition leader detained on an international warrant when he came here at the invitation of Radio Free Europe faces death if sent back to his homeland, a spokeswoman for the U.S.-funded network contended Friday.

Mukhammat Salikh, who was detained Wednesday at the Prague airport, is “one of the few outspoken opponents of [Uzbekistan’s] President [Islam] Karimov,” Sonia Winter said. “He’s a defender of human rights. He himself was persecuted and had to leave the country. . . . We believe he would face certain death there.”

On Friday, a Prague municipal court ordered that Salikh remain in detention until Czech authorities receive all documentation related to Uzbekistan’s request via Interpol for his extradition.

Uzbekistan, just north of Afghanistan, is now a key U.S. ally in the war against terrorism. But the country “has one of the worst records in Central Asia on human rights and respect for international norms,” Winter said. “Our invitation to Mr. Salikh still stands, and we hope he’s going to be able to accept it.”

Salikh, head of the banned opposition party Erk, or Freedom, received political asylum in Norway two years ago and came to the Czech capital using a Norwegian travel document, Norwegian Foreign Ministry spokesman Karsten Klepsvik said Friday.

“We have three times denied requests from the Uzbek government to hand him over to them,” Klepsvik said. “He fulfilled the requirements for political asylum in Norway. . . . He ran against the president and lost [in 1991] and obviously left the country because he did not feel safe.”

Last year, Salikh was sentenced in absentia to 15 1/2 years in prison for alleged involvement in a 1999 bombing that killed 16 people in Tashkent, the Uzbek capital. Human rights organizations say that there was no material evidence against him and that allegations of his involvement made by other defendants were obtained through torture.

Czech Interior Minister Stanislav Gross said Thursday that countries should generally honor international arrest warrants, but “we’ll also have to consider other matters--for instance, the reasons why Norway gave this man asylum.”

In cases where extradition would mean death, “persons are not given up,” Gross added.

Salikh’s detention in Prague “has really stirred up emotions in the human rights community,” with several high-profile organizations appealing for his immediate release, said Peter Zalmayev, coordinator for states of the former Soviet Union at the New York-based International League for Human Rights. “He does face a credible threat of bodily harm or death, based on Uzbekistan’s track record.”

Zalmayev cited the case of the death in detention in July of Shovrik Razimurodov, a former member of the Uzbek parliament and a leading human rights activist.

“If Salikh is extradited back to Tashkent, we have all the reasons to believe he might face the same fate as well,” Zalmayev said.

Acacia Shields, Central Asia coordinator for New York-based Human Rights Watch, said Friday that she had attended the court proceeding against Salikh in Uzbekistan and that “it was nothing but a Soviet-style show trial.”

“The case against Mr. Salikh is an effort by Mr. Karimov to eliminate . . . the only person who ever had the courage to stand up as an independent candidate and challenge him in an election,” Shields said.

“I’m shocked that Interpol and the Czech authorities took this seriously at all,” she added. “The only explanation I can give is the current anti-terrorism campaign and the fact that Uzbekistan is exploiting that and the tragedy that took place in the United States.

“In this current climate, there’s much legitimate concern about terrorism, and governments don’t want to be caught having made mistakes and let terrorists slip through their hands,” Shields said. “But that’s not the situation here.”

Zalmayev and Shields both expressed concern that the war against terrorism is providing cover for various authoritarian regimes to crack down harder on dissent.

“Countries that have for years now been repressing minority groups or dissident groups in their country are now using--or misusing--the label of ‘terrorist’ in order to cover up the violations against these people,” Shields said.

“In the case of Uzbekistan, it’s a clear added mechanism for Karimov’s repressive machinery to justify his clampdown on Muslim believers, most of whom are peaceful believers,” Zalmayev said.

Salikh filed an application Friday for political asylum in the Czech Republic, said his lawyer, Miroslava Kohoutova. Such a request blocks extradition pending processing of the application, she said.

Zalmayev noted that Czech President Vaclav Havel is himself a former dissident and that the country has a generally good record on human rights issues. That means “it’s probably unlikely” that Salikh will be sent back to Uzbekistan, he said.

*

Times staff writer Holley reported from Warsaw and special correspondent Drapalova from Prague.