{"id":879,"date":"2012-01-26T03:12:43","date_gmt":"2012-01-26T00:12:43","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/jwforum.net\/news\/2012\/01\/26\/turkmenistan-four-year-prison-sentence-after-secret-trial\/"},"modified":"2021-08-18T10:29:56","modified_gmt":"2021-08-18T07:29:56","slug":"turkmenistan-four-year-prison-sentence-after-secret-trial","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/jwforum.net\/portal\/turkmenistan-four-year-prison-sentence-after-secret-trial\/","title":{"rendered":"Turkmenistan: Four-Year Prison Sentence After \u201cSecret Trial\u201d"},"content":{"rendered":"
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Two months after his arrest, Jehovah\u2019s Witness Vladimir Nuryllayev has been given a four-year prison term at a \u201csecret trial\u201d in Turkmenistan\u2019s capital Ashgabad [Ashgabat] on charges his community insists are fabricated. The court sentenced Nuryllayev on 18 January on charges of \u201cspreading pornography\u201d, a court official, who did not give her name, told Forum 18 News Service from Ashgabad on 24 January. \u201cAll this has been done because he is a Jehovah\u2019s Witness,\u201d fellow Jehovah\u2019s Witnesses told Forum 18. \u201cVladimir is a highly moral and deeply devout person and has nothing to do with pornography.\u201d Community members complain that the trial was held in secret, preventing them from attending to support Nuryllayev. An unverified report indicates that a Muslim may have been imprisoned on similar charges for distributing religious discs.<\/div>\n

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Forum 18 knows of seven other men serving sentences as religious prisoners of conscience, six of them Jehovah\u2019s Witness conscientious objectors and one Protestant pastor. Former prisoners have testified that they were beaten and maltreated while in labour camp.<\/div>\n
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Four-Year Sentence<\/div>\n
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Judge Iskander Bekturdiyev of Ashgabad\u2019s Azatlyk District Court sentenced Nuryllayev on 18 January under Criminal Code Article 164, Part 2, the court official told Forum 18. This Article punishes \u201cproduction or distribution of pornographic items\u201d more than once or by a group of people. The maximum penalty is five years\u2019 imprisonment.<\/div>\n
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The court official added that the written verdict has already been issued (something Forum 18 has been unable to verify) and that Nuryllayev has ten days in which to appeal if he chooses.<\/div>\n
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The court official could not say if Nuryllayev was present at the trial or not. He has been held at the detention centre at Yashlyk, 40 kms (25 miles) south-east of Ashgabad, since his arrest on 15 November 2011. Officials indicated after his trial that he is likely to remain there for a further two weeks or so before being transferred to a labour camp.<\/div>\n
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Religious Literature Confiscated, \u201cFine\u201d, Beating And Arrest<\/div>\n
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The 39-year-old Nuryllayev is a building worker who earns his living by renovating private homes. He lives in a small Ashgabad flat with his mother and other relatives.<\/div>\n
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Nuryllayev\u2019s prosecution began after a conflict with a member of his family who lives in the same flat. The family member who does not share his faith reportedly went to the police in late September 2011 to tell them he is a Jehovah\u2019s Witness and that he kept some religious literature in a cupboard in the flat. The local police officer then arrived and, going straight to the cupboard, confiscated the literature.<\/div>\n
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On 18 October 2011, the officer ordered Nuryllayev to pay a \u201cfine\u201d of 375 Manats (773 Norwegian Kroner, 101 Euros or 132 US Dollars). Nuryllayev paid the fine the following day, hoping that this would end the case. Although the officer gave him a receipt, neither he nor the receipt indicated what the \u201cfine\u201d was for or what Article of the Code of Administrative Offences it was supposed to relate to.<\/div>\n
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Two officials who claimed to be from the hyakimlik (local administration) came to Nuryllayev\u2019s flat in the evening of 20 October 2011, insisting that they needed to take away his notebook computer. Because they gave no reason or warrant for the seizure, Nuryllayev tried to cling on to it. However, after he wrote down the two officials\u2019 names, they got angry and began to beat him, sources told Forum 18.<\/div>\n
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Nuryllayev\u2019s mother, who is incapacitated after an accident, came into the room and saw the blood from her son\u2019s injuries, triggering heart problems.<\/div>\n
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Police came to Nuryllayev\u2019s home to arrest him on 15 November 2011, after which he was transferred to Yashlyk.<\/div>\n
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Fabricated Accusations?<\/div>\n
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On 16 November 2011, the day after Nuryllayev\u2019s arrest, the criminal case under Article 164, Part 2 was opened against him by Azatlyk District Police\u2019s Investigation Department with the approval of the District Prosecutor. The investigation was led by Investigator Rejepmurat Kurbanov. The accusation against him was formally lodged on 19 November 2011.<\/div>\n
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Jehovah\u2019s Witnesses allege that the prosecution assertion that Nuryllayev gave a disc containing pornographic material to two named individuals on two separate occasions in Ashgabad \u2013 near a market in September 2011 and in a park in October 2011 \u2013 was a fabrication. \u201cVladimir had never seen the two people before,\u201d Jehovah\u2019s Witnesses told Forum 18. Moreover, they say the notebook computer was the only computer he had, and the disc drive on it had broken.<\/div>\n
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Investigator Kurbanov refused absolutely to discuss the way he had conducted the investigation or the Jehovah\u2019s Witness claims that the accusation had been fabricated. \u201cIt\u2019s good to hear from you,\u201d he told Forum 18 from Ashgabad on 24 January. But he kept repeating \u201cYou must ask your questions of the court,\u201d before putting the phone down.<\/div>\n
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The telephones of the Interior Ministry in Ashgabad were engaged or went unanswered each time Forum 18 called on 24 January.<\/div>\n
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Muslim Sentenced On Similar Charges?<\/div>\n
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In early January, as Nuryllayev was awaiting trial, an anonymous message to Radio Liberty\u2019s Turkmen Service \u2013 seen by Forum 18 \u2013 claimed that an unnamed Muslim man had been imprisoned \u201clast year\u201d merely for distributing religious audio and video discs. The message said that officials had used the accusation of distributing pornography to imprison the Muslim. The message asked that the news be brought to the attention of international human rights organisations.<\/div>\n
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It remains impossible to verify the truth of the message.<\/div>\n
–<\/div>\n
http:\/\/www.eurasiareview.com<\/div>\n
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Two months after his arrest, Jehovah\u2019s Witness Vladimir Nuryllayev has been given a four-year prison term at a \u201csecret trial\u201d in Turkmenistan\u2019s capital Ashgabad [Ashgabat] on charges his community insists are fabricated. The court sentenced…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[25],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-879","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-turkmenistan"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/jwforum.net\/portal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/879","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/jwforum.net\/portal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/jwforum.net\/portal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jwforum.net\/portal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jwforum.net\/portal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=879"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/jwforum.net\/portal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/879\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":5799,"href":"https:\/\/jwforum.net\/portal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/879\/revisions\/5799"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/jwforum.net\/portal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=879"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jwforum.net\/portal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=879"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jwforum.net\/portal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=879"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}