Ex-Soviet Turkmenistan has freed an activist whose conviction sparked outrage from rights groups, but are expelling him from the country and seizing his home, Human Rights Watch said yesterday.
The New York-based rights organization said that the sentence of Andrei Zatoka, an environmental and civil society activist sentenced to five years in jail for assault, was commuted to a fine and that he had been freed.
“We are very happy that Andrei Zatoka is no longer behind bars,” said Holly Cartner, Europe and Central Asia director at Human Rights Watch (HRW). “The charges against him were completely bogus and he should never have been in prison in the first place.”
But the authorities in Ashgabat are forcing Zatoka, who holds dual Turkmen and Russian citizenship, to leave the country and relinquish ownership of his apartment, the group said.
Friends who joined the activist to help him and his wife pack were kicked out of the apartment, leaving them to pack their belongings themselves, HRW said.
Zatoka was shopping at a market in the northern Turkmen city of Dashoguz when he was attacked by a stranger, but was arrested and subsequently convicted of having instigated the incident after reporting it to police.
Turkmenistan, a Central Asian state on the eastern shore of the Caspian Sea and one of the world’s most cloistered countries, has long been the subject of sharp criticism over its human rights record.
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