An international human rights group asked the Russian...

An international human rights group asked the Russian prosecutor-general not to extradite three Tajik nationals arrested by Russian security forces earlier in 2003. In an appeal, posted on the Tajikistantimes.ru web site, the director of Human Rights Watch's Moscow office, Anna Neystad, said that the three, which include a former interior minister and an MP, could be executed or tortured if handed over to their country. "The international Human Rights Watch organization is concerned over the fate of three people who have been detained upon a request of the Tajik law-enforcement agencies. "Yoqub Salimov, a former Tajik interior minister, was detained on 21 June 2003 and is currently being held in the FSB [Russian Federal Security Service] Lefortovo remand centre. The father and son Nasrulloyevs; Habibullo [also known as Habib] Nasrulloyev [a former MP], born in 1945, and Muhammad Nasrulloyev, born in 1975, were detained on 13 August. "All the three are awaiting a decision by the Russian Prosecutor-General's Office on their handover to the Tajik authorities. "The crimes with which Salimov and the Nasrulloyevs are charged carry the death penalty, which is actively carried out in Tajikistan. Moreover, many human rights organizations, including Human Rights Watch and Amnesty International, note many cases in which Tajikistan's law-enforcement agencies used illegal methods, in particular widespread torture for obtaining confessions, when conducting investigations. "Article 11 of the European convention on extradition states that an extradition request could be turned down if the requesting side fails to provide guarantees that capital punishment will not be used. In addition, the Article 3 of the convention on torture, other violent and inhumane or disgraceful treatment and punishment, totally bans a person from being sent, returned or extradited to another state if there are serious grounds for concern that the person might face torture there," the appeal said.