SOKULUK, Kyrgyzstan — The widow of a Russian citizen who died after being beaten by police in Kyrgyzstan says she has no confidence in the court trying four policemen in connection with her husband’s death — but the court has rejected her statement, RFE/RL’s Kyrgyz Service reports.
The four, from the southern town of Bazar-Korgon, went on trial in the northern town of Sokoluk on October 19.
They are charged with torture, abuse of office, and extortion in connection with the August death in southern Jalal-Abad of Usmanjan (aka Dadamirza) Kholmirzaev, an ethnic Uzbek and Russian citizen.
Kholmirzaev died in a hospital on August 9, two days after being questioned by Bazar-Korgon district police about the deadly clashes between local Uzbeks and Kyrgyz in June last year.
A spokesman for the Prosecutor-General acknowledged in August that Kholmirzaev had been beaten by local police.
Although the incident occurred in southern Kyrgyzstan, local officials decided for “security reasons” to hold the four policemen in a pretrial detention center in the northern town of Sokuluk and try them there.
Kholmirzaev’s widow, Zulfia Kholmirzaeva, filed the no-confidence statement last month, saying she cannot trust a court that transferred two of the four defendants from a detention center to house arrest.
The court today rejected that statement.
The trial was adjourned until November 14.
Read more in Kyrgyz here