CCPR/C/113/D/2054/2011
detained in the Osh City police station. At the time of his detention, the author’s brother
was in sound physical and mental health. On 7 November 2005, the author’s brother was
formally charged with violating article 130 of the Criminal Code of Kyrgyzstan, which
prohibits forced sodomy. On the same day, the local prosecutor ordered that the author’s
brother be transferred to a pretrial detention centre operated by the Ministry of Justice.
Despite the prosecutor’s transfer order, and for reasons that were not investigated or
explained by the authorities, the author’s brother continued to be held at the police station
for a further 13 days.
2.2
On 20 November 2005, shortly after 6:30 a.m., the author’s brother was found
unconscious and bleeding profusely from numerous cuts in his detention cell, which was a
holding cell, measuring 3 metres by 3 metres, that he shared with six other men. He had
cuts on his throat, the inner side of his left wrist and the inner side of his left ankle and
abrasions on his left forearm, the inner side of his right ankle and his abdomen, and several
of his teeth were missing. After being found by the guards, the author’s brother was taken
by ambulance to the Osh central hospital, where he died shortly after his arrival. An
autopsy was conducted the same day. In the portion of the autopsy report entitled
“circumstances of the case”, it was stated that the “prisoner Rakhmonberdi Ernazarov,
1961, cut his throat for the purpose of committing suicide”.
2.3
The author maintains that throughout the course of his confinement his brother had
been subjected to psychological and physical abuse by other men in his cell because of the
allegations against him. The authorities were aware of the abuse and also of the risk it
posed to his life, but did nothing to prevent, halt or punish it. He was particularly vulnerable
because he was charged with a sexual offence against another man. A guard at the police
station where he was held told the family lawyer that the author’s brother had been
subjected to constant insults, that he had been forced to eat and sleep near the toilet, that his
dish and spoon had been damaged by his cellmates to make it difficult for him to eat and
that he had been forced to inflict injuries upon himself with metal cutlery.
2.4
Throughout his detention, the author’s brother could not be visited by his family and
saw his lawyer only on one occasion. The author and his sisters made repeated attempts to
visit him. The police station did not have facilities where visits by relatives could take
place. The family was told that they were not permitted to communicate with him and that
they could not send him any mail or give him any food. On one occasion when his sisters
attempted to visit him they were told by the investigating officer in charge of his case that
he was “better off dead”.
2.5
On 21 November 2005, an investigator from the Ministry of Internal Affairs ordered
an investigation into the death of Mr. Ernazarov, which was to be led by a prosecutor from
the Osh Prosecutor’s Office. On or around the same date, the Department of Internal
Security of the Ministry of Internal Affairs ordered an internal investigation of Mr.
Ernazarov’s death in custody. The author maintains that both investigations were
perfunctory and that both concluded that his brother had committed suicide. The police
failed to seize important evidence, question key witnesses, undertake a proper autopsy and
investigate why a vulnerable prisoner had been detained in such a way. While the
investigations concluded that the author’s brother had cut his own throat, no cutting
instrument was ever recovered from the cell. In an independent evaluation of the autopsy
report of the author’s brother, Physicians for Human Rights indicated that it would be
impossible to conclude from the autopsy report that Mr. Ernazarov’s death was a suicide,
and that several injuries detailed in the report were very unusual for a suicide and could
indicate that the author’s brother had been trying to defend himself. The report did not
provide any timing for the non-lethal injuries and contained contradictory descriptions of
the lethal wounds on the throat.
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