Photos by Uznews.Net

The trial of Umida Niyazova, 32, lasted only two days and ended on may 1. Judge Nizom Rustamov sentenced Niyazova, a human rights activist and journalist, to seven years imprisonment in a colony.

Niyazova was tried under three articles of the Criminal Code: Article 223 (illegal crossing of the border and illegal entry), Article 244 Part 1 (production or proliferation of materials that pose a threat to national security and public order), and Article 246 (smuggling). Criminal penalty for the latter implies up to ten years imprisonment.

Niyazova was detained by customs officials of the Tashkent airport on her way home from Bishkek on December 21. Customs officials were particularly interested in her notebook with materials on its hard disk, including those dealing with the events in Andijan in May 2005. These latter included materials provided by Human Rights Watch Niyazova was associated with, articles from the Internet, photos, and interviews with eyewitnesses. Once all of that was found on the hard disk, customs officials immediately called for an expert from the Mass Communications Monitoring Center of the Uzbek Communications and Information Agency. The experts pronounced the materials in question as calling for overthrow of the constitutional regime and as religious and extremist.

The notebook, flash-disks, and passport were confiscated. Niyazova was interrogated and permitted to go home on the pledge to remain within reach and cooperate with the investigation. Suspecting what it all might end in, Niyazova fled to Kyrgyzstan. She was soon informed via her lawyer Abror Yusupov that the investigation was dropped and the materials were judged harmless, and that she could go home and collect her notebook and passport. Niyazova took the authorities at their word, came back, and was arrested near the Uzbek-Kyrgyz border on January 22. It turned out that the Uzbek Transport Prosecutor's Office had pressed charges against her on January 6. The matter concerned smuggling and proliferation of materials threatening national security and public order. Her lawyer's assurances - whether he was on the level with her or not - were but a ruse to lure her back. Charges of illegal crossing of the border were added to the list soon.

Investigation took more than three months. Detectives interrogated dozens witnesses - as though they were dealing with an international terrorist and not a harmless free-lance journalist working for Human Rights Watch and Oazis (Internet-journal of the Russian Center of Extreme Journalism). The investigation ended in April.

The court listened to nine witnesses on the first day. They were officials of the Mass Communications Monitoring Center, the ones who proclaimed the materials on the hard disk of Niyazova's notebook a menace to national security and public order. Customs officials were summoned as well.

Experts of the Mass Communications Monitoring Center looked definitely unsure of themselves, offering but garbled answers to any question from the defense or Niyazova herself. Rustamov was extremely helpful. Seeing these experts in trouble, he read aloud excerpts from their former testimony and asked the experts if that was how it had been. They nodded in obvious relief.

Anyway, the experts confirmed that the materials on the hard disk were extremist in nature. Niyazova wanted to know exactly what materials they were referring to. The experts could only recall Lead Rain, a Human Rights Watch report on Andijan, and pieces by Volosevich [I'm flattered - author] on the same subject. Meanwhile, all these materials are easily available in the Internet - everywhere but in Uzbekistan where access to these sites is blocked.

Two dozens people turned up for the second day of the trial - Niyazova's family, human rights activists, representatives of German and American embassies, and free-lance journalists. Umida's aunt and Andrea Berg, the head of Human Rights Watch projects in Uzbekistan, were the only ones permitted entry.

Niyazova herself was driven to the building of the court in a special van at about 11.00 a.m.

Rustamov found Niyazova guilty under all charges. The humane court, however, took circumstances into account (namely that the defendant had a child and elderly parents) and sentenced Niyazova to only seven years imprisonment and not eight as the prosecution had insisted.

"I'm shocked, and so is Umida," her cousin Shafoat said. As far as Shafoat is concerned, Niyazova's guilt was never proved. "These so called experts did not prove anything," she said. "Berg provided documents showing that this Lead Rain report was not Umida's and that it had been mailed to all state structures. As for Umida, she found all information in the Internet where it is available to everyone including you or me. Umida did not proliferate this information in flyers of anything. She only kept it in her personal notebook. She is a journalist after all, why cannot she keep information she thinks she may need? As a matter of fact, these materials had been erased from the hard disk and it was some specialists who restored them. All of that was explained to the court. In other words, she was tried for the files she had deleted from her own computer. As for these smuggling charges, she mentioned the notebook in the declaration. She called it electronic data carrier or some such thing and they say she should have wrote "a notebook". What's the difference? Plus the flash disk. That's what they call smuggled goods. Umida was only guilty of trying to cross the border without documents. Still, she did so for the sake of personal safety. She knew what she was doing, she knows the system. Is it a crime to be punishable by seven years imprisonment?"

"The trial was anything but fair," Berg said. "The authorities did not even announce the date. They merely summoned Umida's lawyer and had her brought in. It's really something: the Uzbek authorities are morbidly afraid of publicity. They become scared whenever a witness or a journalist turns up with monitoring purposes. That is why what people see with their own eyes has nothing to do with what they read in newspapers and why what is proclaimed by TV networks and state officials collides with the actual state of affairs. Hence the authorities' fear of witnesses."