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Jail is the worst ordeal man may encounter in his life. Jadgar Turlibekov, 69, the head of the Kashkadarja division of the Uzbek Human Rights Society, spent six months behind the bars on fabricated charges. What he had endured there Turlibekov told Ferghana.Ru shortly before he escaped Uzbekistan for fear of another arrest.

Turlibekov was born in the Zangiatin district of the Tashkent region in 1937. A Kazakh, he went to an Uzbek school and technical college. He worked as a TV and radio equipment repair specialist. In the USSR, Turlibekov was sentenced to imprisonment on two occasions. In 1963, he was sentenced to seven months in jail for a fight. In 1975, the repair shop he worked at caught fire, Turlibekov got the blame, and ended up in jail for another two year term. He was released in 1976. Turlibekov taught electrical engineering in Karshi (Kashkadarja region) between 1980 and 1997 when he became Distinguished Teacher. Turlibekov was on the team composed by the Higher Education Ministry to write a text book on electrical engineering in the Uzbek language. He has been a human rights activist and journalist since 1998. Turlibekov worked with the British IWPR in his journalistic capacity. He lived in Karshi between 1976 and September 2007. Turlibekov is married, with adult children and grandchildren.

Jadgar Turlibekov after the prison. Photo by Surat Ikramov

Turlibekov joined Tolib Jakubov's Uzbek Human Rights Society in 1998. Turlibekov and Jakubov have worked side by side for nearly a decade. When in the Uzbek Human Rights Society, Turlibekov organized a lot of pickets including the very first one in front of the Interior Ministry in Tashkent on May 27, 2002. In 2003, he organized the first picket in front of the building of the National Security Service. Turlibekov was arrested in Karshi on June 17, 2006. He spent 53 days in the detention cell without a single meeting with lawyers. Official charges under nine articles of the Criminal Code were pressed against him. He was sentenced under only one article (extortion), however, and served his time in jails in Bukhara and Tashkent and in the Tavaksai colony.

Jadgar Turlibekov, 69. Photo by Ferghana.Ru

Turlibekov's unabridged story is available on request. Contact us at ferghana@fergananews.com (Subject - Turlibekov story).

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