Azimjan Askarov is a human rights defender who has spent 25 years documenting human rights abuses in Kyrgyzstan. He is serving a life sentence after an unfair trial during which he was beaten in detention and denied access to his lawyer.

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In 2010 Azimjan was convicted – solely on the basis of a confession beaten out of him – of involvement in the killing of a policeman during recent interethnic violence. No credible evidence was presented against him. The national Ombudsman, who carried out a parallel investigation, said that the charges against him were clearly politically motivated. Azimjan had been working on documenting the human rights violations committed in this region previous to his detention. He had been collecting data about those who had been killed and injured during the recent ethnic conflict. According to Ms Valentina Gritsenko, chairwoman of the NGO Spravedlivost (Justice) based in Jalalabad, Azimjan Askarov had obtained video footage of atrocities which had taken place, and the police were aware of that.