Uzbekistan has released a former United Nations employee held for 11 years over treason, the UN said Tuesday, the latest sign of thawing autocracy in the secretive ex-Soviet country. Erkin Musaev, an Uzbek citizen, was running a joint UN-European Union programme when he was arrested at the airport in the Uzbek capital Tashkent in 2006.
The authoritarian government of president Islam Karimov, who died last year, accused Musaev of trying to pass state secrets to foreign powers. Musaev faced three separate trials in both military and civilians courts and was sentenced for offences ranging from "high treason" to embezzlement and conspiracy, Elizabeth Throssell, a spokeswoman for the UN human rights office, said in Geneva.
The United Nations Development Programme in Tashkent "found no basis for these accusations", Throssell said, adding that previous UN findings had criticised the trials and deemed them "arbitrary". Musaev, now 50, had also previously worked for the Uzbek defence ministry. Human Rights Watch said he was tortured while in prison. UN rights chief Zeid Ra'ad Al Hussein, who visited Uzbekistan in May, lobbied President Shavkat Mirziyoyev for Musaev's release.