Azam Farmonov

Who is Azam Farmonov?

Azam Farmonov is a currently-imprisoned Uzbekistani rural development activist. Amnesty International considers him a prisoner of conscience and named him a 2011 "priority case".

Farmonov has a wife, Ozoda Yakubova, and two children. His father-in-law, Talib Yakubov, is the Vice President of the Human Rights Society of Uzbekistan.

On 29 April 2006, Farmonov was arrested along with fellow activist Alisher Karamatov and charged with extortion. The two later reported torture by security forces, including partial suffocation with a disconnected gas mask and beatings on the legs and heels. Human Rights Watch condemned the trial and stated that it "appear[ed] to be a politically motivated effort to stop their human rights work" in keeping with a recent pattern of suspicious charges against human rights workers. Front Line also described the arrests as politically motivated and "part of an ongoing campaign against human rights defenders in Uzbekistan." Amnesty International also condemned the charges and called for the immediate release of Farmonov and Karamatov. Uzbekistani government officials, however, denied that the extortion charges were politically motivated.

Both men were convicted and sentenced to nine years in prison. As of February 2010, Farmonov was currently serving his sentence at Yaslik "severe regime" prison camp in violation of his sentence, which called for a "general regime" camp. According to his wife, he has repeatedly been placed in a "punishment cell," and on 8 January 2008, was stripped naked, handcuffed, and left in an unheated punishment cell for 23 days.