Saidkamol Akhmedov, lawyer from Osh, Kyrgyzstan, is a prisoner in Uzbekistan, his son Saidjamol told Ferghana.Ru news agency.

Once he received the refugee mandate from the UN, Akhmedov settled in Alma-Ata, Kazakhstan. He was arrested on the request from the Kyrgyz authorities in Tashkent on September 5, 2007, when visiting his family living with his mother-in-law. Akhmedov is a prisoner now, occupying a cell in Facility 64-IS-1 better known as the Tashkent Jail.

The letter to the lawyer's son from the Kyrgyz Prosecutor General's Office dated October 9 states that "the request for extradition of Akhmedov was forwarded to the Prosecutor General's Office of the Republic of Uzbekistan in accordance with the Convention on Legal Assistance (January 22, 1993)."

Akhmedov received the refugee certificate from the Office of the UN High Commissar for Refugees in June 2007, a year after his appeal to this international organization. "Protected as he is by the UN mandate, my father cannot be extradited to Kyrgyzstan," his son said.

According to his son, it was Akhmedov's professional activity that incurred the Kyrgyz authorities' wrath. Criminal charges were pressed against him in June 2007. "The action against him was brought illegitimately," his son, a lawyer himself, said.

Valentina Gritsenko of the Movement Justice operating in the southern part of Kyrgyzstan appraised Akhmedov as a professional who worked with human rights organizations and wrote innumerable pieces on human rights. The human rights community points out that arrest of a person officially regarded by the UN as a refugee is a gross violation of the international law and practice.

Akhmedov wrote a letter to the president and prime minister of Kyrgyzstan in autumn 2006. He emphasized that criminal charges pressed against him and the investigation that followed involved 42 violations of the Kyrgyz Code of Criminal Procedure and 10 violations of international documents signed by Kyrgyzstan. The lawyer asked for an answer to his complaints in accordance with the acting legislation.

There are nearly 300 citizens of Kyrgyzstan in Uzbek jails nowadays.