The Samarkand city criminal court sentenced a local resident who is accused of encroaching on the constitutional order of Uzbekistan.
According to the case file, the man E. Khasanov graduated from Samarkand State University in 1979, taught mathematics at evening school No. 11 in Samarkand for two years, and then worked for the Vatanparvar organization, where he retired in 2011.
The court's ruling reads that in 2021, he began listening to speeches by a Russian national Oleg Turishkin, who asked him if he had applied to renounce his USSR citizenship, and then, upon hearing that he had not done so, included him in the "State Register of the USSR" Telegram group and sent him a certificate of USSR citizenship by mail.
Khasanov met a man named Alexey Ivanovich on YouTube and on January 3, 2023, went to Moscow, where he met people who were gathering supporters for the “restoration of the Soviet Union,” since this country “had not yet legally collapsed.” They also announced the imminent return of the constitution and laws of the times of Joseph Stalin and the unification of 15 of its former republics into a union.
In March last year, the defendant was added to the Telegram group “Uzbek SSR/USSR,” where he published stories about “the superficial nature of Uzbekistan’s independence, that the Soviet Union did not officially disassembled, that 15 republics that were part of it, with the help of the United States, arbitrarily declared their independence, and that the former Soviet republics will soon rejoin the USSR.”
According to the conclusion of a comprehensive judicial political and linguistic examination, his stories contain ideas that openly call for an unconstitutional change in the existing governance system of Uzbekistan.
He also published an article in the Telegram group entitled “The All-Union Communist Party of Bolsheviks of the City of Samarkand” (VKPB), which is considered his “report as the secretary of the VKPB for the Samarkand region.”
The accused did not plead guilt, but asked the court to mitigate the sentence.
The court found Khasanov guilty under Encroachments on the constitutional order of the Republic of Uzbekistan charge, which is punishable by a fine of up to 600 basic calculation units or house arrest liberty from 2 to 5 years or imprisonment for up to 5 years) and, taking into account a number of circumstances (his age, 74, retired person with no criminal record), sentenced him to 3 years of house arrest.
The charged person is prohibited from leaving his apartment between 10:00 p.m. and 6:00 a.m., changing his place of residence without permission from the supervisory authority, leaving the territory of the Samarkand province, and to use Internet.
