Uznews correspondent Solidzhon Abdurakhmanov’s brother Bakhrom Abdurakhmanov, who is acting as his lawyer, was unable to visit him on 25 June in the detention centre in Nukus, the capital of the western autonomous region of Karakalpakstan, where he has been held on a trumped-up drugs charge for the past three weeks.

An official at the prison told him: “The directors are absent, and there is no one here who can decide whether or not we can let you see him.”

Bakhrom Abdurakhmanov said: “The detention centre’s authorities are guilty of a gross violation of article 53.2 of Uzbekistan’s criminal code, which says that if a suspect is detained, his lawyer has the right to talk to him in private as many times and for as long as he wants.”

The Uznews correspondent for Karakalpakstan, Solidzhon Abdurakhmanov is being held on a charge of possessing and using drugs, which he denies. He has often written about the Aral Sea environmental catastrophe’s impact on the population and public health, and Uznews regards him as “Karakalpakstan’s only independent journalist.”