Fergananews.com has the sensational news that Ravshan Muhiddinov, an advisor to President Islam Karimov in Uzbekistan has been found guilty of serious economic crimes and sentenced to a whopping 15 years in jail, according to a report from Radio Ozodlik (Озодлик). "Wow!" is what the BBC Uzbek Service correspondent said on Twitter.
Muhiddinov is the former Minister of Justice of Uzbekistan, the former Deputy Prosecutor General, and was named advisor to the president on July 10, 2011. He was responsible for coordinating the operations of the law-enforcement and oversight agencies. I wonder if he was involved in Uzbekistan's report to the UN Committee Against Torture or had anything to do with sanctioning or punishing torture. Most likely he did.
But he was let go 2.5 months after his appointment and made only acting prosecutor of Tashkent region, which is a come-down after being Prosecutor General and Minister of Justice -- and then he was arrested.
Now, is he guilty? We don't know. They don't have due process in this system he supervised. "Unofficial information" cited by fergananews.com and Ozodlik says this is a "war of kompromat," i.e. various ministries have compromising material on each other's people in their turf battles and use it selectively. Everybody is guilty in Uzbekistan because you have to pay bribes and cut corners everywhere. He was said to have a "roof" in Prime Minister Shavkat Mirziyoyev, who was said to be fighting Rustam Inoyatov, head of the National Security Service (that SNB we're always talking about here!)
So...what happened? The roof leaked?
Ozodlik also ads that Muhiddinov's family are also being pressured and they want to go abroad. The organs always use the "family plan" in the cases and try to turn all your relatives into levers of painful pressure on you.
What else can be concluded from this story? Mirziyoyev has not been fired or has not resigned, as was constantly rumoured. Yet if he was the cover for this guy, and now he's in jail, maybe he's in trouble. Shavkat doesn't appear to have updated that Facebook page of his and my friendship request is still pending. He now has 2,548 friends.
