46
Concerns in Europe: January - June 2001
AI Index: EUR 01/003/2001
Amnesty International September 2001
take into account evidence of torture and ill treatment
provided by the accused with regard to his/her
treatment by law enforcement officials.
The Committee’s recommendations included
amending penal legislation to include the crime of
torture, which would be consistent with the
convention’s definition; taking all necessary steps to
ensure prompt and impartial investigations into
allegations of torture and ill-treatment by law
enforcement officials and to ensure the prosecution
and punishment of alleged perpetrators; taking urgent
and effective steps to establish a fully independent
complaints mechanism; expanding the powers of the
Presidential Human Rights Commission into an
independent and impartial governmental and non-
governmental national human rights commission with
effective powers to investigate all complaints of
human rights violations; ensuring in practice absolute
respect for the principle of the inadmissibility of
evidence obtained by torture; taking urgent steps to
ensure the independence of the judiciary; taking
measures to improve prison conditions; and making
relevant declarations under the convention to allow
the Committee to examine complaints by individuals
or other states parties.
The death penalty
AI was concerned that Kazakstan’s initial report on
steps the country had taken to implement the
provisions of the Convention against Torture and
Other Cruel, Inhuman or Degrading Treatment or
Punishment failed to mention the death penalty under
Article 16. To the best of AI’s knowledge no
comprehensive official statistics on the application of
the death penalty in Kazakstan have been published
since 1998. According to official records, in the first
eight months of 1998, 24 cases of people sentenced to
death came before the presidential Clemency
Commission, and three received clemency. The same
statistics recorded that eight applications out of 56 in
1997 received clemency. No executions were
reported.
The organisation remained concerned, however,
that death sentences continue to be passed and that
executions continue to be carried out. AI learned of at
least two death sentences in 1999 and one in 2000, but
believed that the number of death sentences passed
was much higher. According to a report by Kazak
Commercial Television of 8 November 2000, between
40 to 60 executions were being carried out in the
country every year. Seventeen people had reportedly
been executed in Kazakstan in the first 10 months of
2000. The report also quoted official statistics from
1996 which stated that 63 people had been executed
that year.
AI also remained concerned that the way in which
relatives of prisoners condemned to death are treated
by the Kazak authorities may cause unnecessary
distress and itself constitutes cruel, inhuman and
degrading treatment. The family is usually not
informed of the date of execution and does not have
the right to receive the body of the executed man,
which is buried in an unmarked grave in an
undisclosed location. In the past the organization has
received reports that the family had not been notified
of the death of the prisoner until months after the
execution had taken place.
In the light of Kazakstan’s admission of the
widespread use of torture and cruel, inhuman or
degrading treatment by law enforcement agencies in
order to obtain confessions, both in its initial report to
the Committee against Torture and in public
statements by Kazakstan’s President, and reports that
courts, including the Supreme Court, have continued
to admit evidence reportedly based on coerced
confessions and to convict people and pass sentence
mostly based on such evidence, there was particular
concern that people may have been sentenced to death
and executed on the basis of confessions made as a
result of torture.
Allegations of torture and
ill-treatment in detention
(update to AI Index: EUR 01/03/00)
In March AI learnt that the government had replied to
the UN Special Rapporteur on torture who had
transmitted information on the cases of Irina
Cherkasova, who alleged that she was tortured in
police custody in order to force her to confess to a
murder charge, and of 11 young men aged between 17
and 20 detained in Zhanatas in February 2000 on
suspicion of having participated in a fight during
which a police officer was injured. All alleged ill-
treatment.
The government informed the Special Rapporteur
that Irina Cherkasova was convicted by South
Kazakstan Regional Court on 20 October 1999 on
charges of leading an organized criminal band, illegal
acquisition of firearms and armed robbery, and that
the Supreme Court upheld the verdict. The
government admitted that Irina Cherkasova had stated
in both her initial trial and during her appeal hearing
at the Supreme Court that she had been tortured in
detention, but claimed that her allegations had been
carefully investigated. According to the government
she was interrogated in accordance with the law and
in the presence of her lawyer.
The government informed the Special Rapporteur
that Kairat Seidahmetov, Kuat Saparbaev and
Nurzhan Isakhanov had been found guilty of
malicious delinquency and robbery by Sarysu District
Court in Zhanatas, and sentenced to six, four and three
and a half years’ imprisonment respectively. The other
young men detained were found guilty of delinquency
but were amnestied on 13 July 1999. Regarding the
allegations that some defendants cut their throat in
protest when the verdict was announced, the
government confirmed that they had used sharp
unidentified objects to inflict upon themselves minor
injuries, but that they had been given immediate
medical attention and that no one had died as a result
of this action. Kairat Seidahmetov was in fact serving
his sentence at the ordinary-regime penal colony in
Tara.
The
government
refuted
claims
that
Kurmangazay Bogubaev’s neck and Zhandos
Zhandarbekov’s arm were broken during the judicial