Kyrgyzstan: Trial Marks Escalation in Religious Crackdown
August 13, 2015 - 1:16pm
by Peter Leonard
Squeezed onto narrow benches in an airless courtroom in a provincial town in southern Kyrgyzstan, dozens of men from Imam Rashot Kamalov’s congregation looked bewildered as a disorderly hearing unfolded.
Kamalov stood silent in the defendant’s cage as his lawyers pleaded helplessly for a fair hearing on the charges of inciting religious hatred and disseminating extremist materials. At a hearing on August 4 in Kara-Suu, the presiding judge summarily dismissed witnesses hoping to speak on Kamalov’s behalf, and ignored expert testimony presented by the defense team.
The accusations against the 37-year-old imam of Kara-Suu’s As-Sarakhsi Mosque are not unusual for Kyrgyzstan. But Kamalov is a prominent and hugely popular religious authority. His stature ensures that his trial is a landmark in a crackdown on independent Muslim voices.
The state’s case so far hangs on one piece of evidence found during a raid on Kamalov’s home by armed special operations forces in February. The search turned up a disk carrying a video recording of an 18-minute long sermon, titled “About the Caliphate,” delivered by Kamalov at the As-Sarakhsi Mosque during Friday prayers on July 4, 2014.
http://www.eurasianet.org/node/74671