The Forgotten Prisoner

A citizen of Uzbekistan who asked for political asylum was illegally kept in prison for six months

Recently, in St. Petersburg, at the request of Interpol, a citizen of Uzbekistan, Urinboy Ergashev, was arrested, accused by the authorities of this republic of religious extremism, separatism and an attempt to overthrow the constitutional order. Now the alleged terrorist is going to be extradited to his homeland. Mr. Ergashev himself does not deny that he was in hiding, but not because he was a terrorist, but because he was persecuted for his religious beliefs, as a student of the famous theologian of the Central Asian region Abduvali Mirzaev, who disappeared without a trace at Tashkent airport in 1995.

Ergashev was first detained in St. Petersburg six months ago and spent six months in prison without any reason, because, as it turned out, they simply forgot about him. And when, through the efforts of human rights activists, this was discovered and the court decided to release Mr. Ergashev, law enforcement officers did everything possible to put him back, which they ultimately succeeded in doing.

Meanwhile, Mr. Ergashev, as it turned out, not only did not hide from the Russian authorities, but quite officially tried to obtain refugee status from the migration service. Now, as it has become known, the UN High Commissioner for Refugees has become interested in the fate of the imam’s student, who intends to raise the issue of assigning international refugee status to Mr. Ergashev, and then some other country will shelter him if Russia refuses to provide him with its protection.

52-year-old Urinboy Ergashev told Vremya Novostei that, hiding from his pursuers, he arrived in St. Petersburg four years ago, in 2005, and got a job as a KamAZ driver in a construction company. At the same time, he submitted an application to the FMS, asking for political asylum. There he received refusals one after another and started a legal battle with the officials. In turn, the Prosecutor General's Office of Uzbekistan put Ergashev on the international wanted list, and six months ago St. Petersburg police detained him while checking documents at the Moskovsky station, having discovered his data in the wanted list.

The court issued an arrest warrant, and Mr. Ergashev was placed in St. Petersburg pre-trial detention center No. 4. His case was to be handled by the Transport Prosecutor's Office of St. Petersburg. But, as it turned out, should not mean done. They simply forgot about the unfortunate prisoner - his detention was not extended, but he continued to be kept in prison. And so he would have remained there if not for human rights activists. Lawyer Olga Tseytlina filed a complaint with the Smolninsky District Court, which released Erbashev on February 2. At the same time, according to the lawyer, the prosecutor's office categorically objected, and its representatives threatened that they would arrest him again - right at the exit from the court, and if that failed, they would arrest him when he arrived at the pre-trial detention center to collect his passport, and they would detain him precisely because for lack of identification documents.

They didn’t succeed then, but they soon made up for the lost time. Law enforcement agencies of Uzbekistan, as it turned out, handed over leads on Urinboy Ergashev to Interpol, and operatives from its St. Petersburg branch announced the capture of the wanted man on March 3. As a result, it was announced that a “Wahhabi” had been detained, who allegedly terrorized friendly Uzbekistan and planned to create an Islamic state in the republic in the Fergana Valley in Andijan. For this purpose, as stated in the orientation submitted to Interpol, Ergashev created a certain group “Halka”. The main goal of the “terrorist” was a coup d’état, which was allegedly sponsored by banned Afghan and Pakistani extremist organizations.

As Tseitlin’s lawyer told Vremya Novostey, there is no organization called “Khalka” in Uzbekistan and there could not be, since this word translated into Russian means only the very concept of “party cell”, a link in any religious or political structure, without any - or meaningful definitions.

The hype raised by law enforcement agencies around the capture of a “particularly dangerous international criminal” also seems somewhat exaggerated. Ergashev was hiding from the authorities of his homeland quite officially, having notified the Russian migration service about this. And they detained him not in some “secret shelter”, but near the building of the Dzerzhinsky District Court on Vosstaniya Street, 38, where Mr. Ergashev came to file another complaint about another refusal of the FMS to recognize him as a political refugee. Moreover, Ergashev was completely defenseless and was left alone against the rallied policemen, prosecutors and their colleagues from Uzbekistan - his passport was never returned to him, and because of this he could not formalize an agreement with his lawyer.

Three days after the arrest, on March 6, the same Dzerzhinsky court, having previously studied the data requested from the Smolninsky court, refused to issue an arrest warrant, but the prosecutor, as it turned out, did not need it. According to the lawyer, he did not even let Ergashev out of the cage in the courtroom and ordered him to be handcuffed and sent to prison under an order of arrest in absentia from the court of Uzbekistan. As Ms. Tseitlina explained, since her client was no longer just on the international wanted list, but through Interpol, our prosecutor’s office had the right to make an arrest without a decision from our own court. But why it was necessary then to drag Mr. Ergashev to a Russian court at all remains completely unclear.

Tseitlin's lawyer believes that her client now has few prospects. “FMS, apparently, is not going to give him refugee status,” the defender noted. “And the prosecutor’s office, it seems, will make every effort to extradite him.” According to her, now everything will depend on whether our court agrees to the extradition of Urinboy Ergashev, and on what decision the UN Commission on Refugees will make, which has already been asked about the possibility of granting him international refugee status.

Mikhail TELEKHOV, St. Petersburg