Concerns in Europe: January - June 2001
89
Amnesty International September 2001
AI Index: EUR 01/003/2001
protest against Maksim Strakhov’s death sentence
with the Supreme Court, and to have asked for
psychiatric tests to be carried out to assess his mental
health. The Supreme Court reportedly decided on 21
June to put the execution of Maksim Strakhov on hold
for three months while psychiatric tests were carried
out. The commander of Maksim Strakhov’s military
unit in Chechnya was said to have sent a letter to
President Islam Karimov, signed by ten senior
Russian army officers, urging the President to grant
him clemency.
Nigmatullo Fayzullayev was still believed to be in
imminent danger of execution.
Executions
AI learnt that despite international appeals to
commute Gabdulrafik Akhmadullin’s death sentence,
he was executed on 6 June. Reportedly, his execution
took place in Tashkent prison just two days before his
family was due to visit him. On 29 May his wife had
gone to see a presidential advisor and had reportedly
been told that Gabdulrafik Akhmadullin’s appeal for
clemency would be considered within two or three
months.
Gabdulrafik Akhmadullin
was sentenced to death
by Tashkent City Court on 18 October 2000 for
premeditated, aggravated murder. On 15 January the
Collegium of the Supreme Court upheld the death
sentence. Gabdulrafik Akhmadullin was accused of
having killed two elderly women, relatives of his wife,
whom she had asked to look after the couple’s flat in
Tashkent while she was on holiday with their two
daughters. Gabdulrafik Akhmadullin’s wife claimed
that her husband did not have the intention to rob and
kill the two women, but that he lost his control when
the women insulted him.
Execution delayed
(update to AI index: EUR 01/001/2001)
In April the mother of Vazgen Arutyunyants received
a copy of a letter sent by the UN Human Rights
Committee to the Uzbek authorities under the
Committee’s individual complaints procedure
requesting them to stay Vazgen Arutyunyants’s
execution while the Committee examined his case. In
December 2000 Vazgen Arutyunyants’s mother had
lodged a complaint with the Human Rights Committee
expressing concern that her son’s trial had not met
international fair trial standards and that he had been
tortured while in pre-trial detention to extract a
confession. Vazgen Arutyunyants’s mother was
reportedly told by an official in the President’s
administration that her son’s petition for clemency did
not qualify for consideration by the President because
he had not pleaded guilty. However, Vazgen
Arutyunyants was still alive on death row at the end
of June.
Vazgen Arutyunyants and his co-defendant
Armen Garushyants were sentenced to death by
Tashkent Military Court in May 2000 on two counts
of
premeditated,
aggravated
murder.
Armen
Garushyants was also found guilty of deserting from
his military unit in August 1998, and Vazgen
Arutyunyants of possessing drugs. In October 2000
the Military Collegium of the Supreme Court rejected
their appeals against their death sentences. Vazgen
Arutyunyants, who maintained his innocence, had
reportedly been severely beaten by police in an
apparent attempt to extract a confession following his
arrest in July 1999.
Y U G O S L A V I A,
FEDERAL REPUBLIC (F R
Y)
S E R B I A
A N D M O N T E N E G R O
Political Background
Under both Federal and Serbian governments,
incidents of human rights abuses have declined
substantially, and both parliaments have taken steps to
address outstanding human rights concerns. In
February, the Serbian Parliament passed legislation to
abolish the 1998 Public Information Act - used by the
previous government to suppress freedom of
expression, particularly that of the independent media.
Following the amendment of the law on citizenship in
February, refugees were able to apply for citizenship
in the FRY, the Interior Ministry reporting that they
had received over 300,000 requests for citizenship
since 1997. The government also introduced a
program to register refugees and IDPs, which in
theory - although reportedly not in practice - then
allowed them access to basic civil rights and services.
On 4 June the Serbian Minister of Justice Vladan
Bati
announced that Serbia had decided to abolish
the death penalty, [a draft law abolishing the DP was
published in August]. Throughout the period several
municipal courts decided to award compensation to
Otpor (Resistance) activists, following the filing of 62
complaints against the police relating to cases of
harassment and unlawful detention during the period
up to October 2000. Other human rights concerns,
many of them outstanding from the period of the
previous government, remain to be addressed,
including reform of the administration of justice and
of the police.
The FRY was awarded special guest status at the
Council of Europe on 22 January - and moves were
made towards securing future entry to the European
Union, and the NATO Partnership for Peace
Programme. External pressure to improve human
rights standards was primarily focussed on
cooperation with the International Criminal Tribunal
for the Former Yugoslavia (Tribunal), and in