Amnesty International strongly criticized Tajikistan...

Amnesty International strongly criticized Tajikistan for its death penalty practices. The organisation stated in a report entitled "Tajikistan: deadly secrets. The death penalty in law and practice," that the country sentenced prisoners to death without fair trials in an environment of secrecy where families weren't even told that their convicted relatives had been executed. "The secrecy surrounding all aspects of the death penalty, the cruel and random way in which it is applied and the failures of the criminal justice system mean that Tajikistan is violating internationally guaranteed human rights," Amnesty International wrote in its report. Families of prisoners aren't informed when requests for clemency are turned down until the convicts have been moved to death row, and then they aren't given the chance to visit their relatives before execution by shooting, Amnesty said. The country's legal code is also largely unchanged from Soviet times, when it was heavily biased in favour of prosecutors.