Roziyev Abdurakhman and Ibragimov Rakhman were sentenced...

Roziyev Abdurakhman and Ibragimov Rakhman were sentenced to death and another two to long prison terms in southern Kyrgyzstan, the Kyrgyz independent fergana.org news agency reported.
It said: "Two death penalties and 20 and 14 years of imprisonment. This is the outcome of a sad story, which is a year old and claimed the lives of two minors from Dzhalal-Abad [the administrative centre of southwestern Dzhalal-Abad Region]."
The four had been charged with extortion and premeditated murder, the report said. "Four residents of the town of Dzhalal-Abad were detained on suspicion of the murder of these children in mid March 2004. A preliminary investigation, which lasted for three months, found the detainees guilty under a number of articles of the Kyrgyz Criminal Code - kidnapping with a view to ransom and the premeditated murder of two minors. All four responsible for this pleaded guilty during the investigation. However, at the trial they said that investigators had extracted this evidence from them by beating, threatening and cheating them. At the same time, the defendants did not offer any evidence to back up their arguments."