Uzbekistan has freed a reporter who was incarcerated for nearly two decades on sedition charges, the longest-known prison term served by a journalist, human rights advocates said Friday.
The reporter, Yusuf Ruzimuradov, 64, who worked for a newspaper banned by the Uzbek authorities, had been held since 1999.
“Glad to hear that #journalist Yusuf Ruzimuradov was released from #Uzbekistan prison,” the Eurasia division of the Committee to Protect Journalists, an advocacy group, said on its Twitter account. The group said he had been held “longer than anybody else in the world — after being convicted on politicized charges in a quick sham trial.”
Steve Swerdlow, Central Asia researcher for Human Rights Watch, said in a statement: “Today, I got a Skype message I will treasure: the government of Uzbekistan has finally released journalist Yusuf Ruzimuradov after 19 long years in jail.”
The Human Rights Society of Uzbekistan, known as Ezgulik, said Ruzimuradov had been freed from a penal colony in the town of Chirchik, near Tashkent, the capital, on Feb. 22. The reason for the delay in announcing his freedom was not immediately clear.
Agence France-Presse quoted an Ezgulik official, Abdurakhmon Tashanov, as saying in an emailed message that Ruzimuradov “feels well.”
The Central Asian nation of Uzbekistan has long been known as one of the most cloistered and authoritarian states to have emerged from the collapse of the Soviet Union, although the severity of repression has eased slightly in the past few years.
Ruzimuradov was incarcerated during the rule of President Islam Karimov, a ruthless autocrat who tolerated no dissent and silenced the news media during his nearly three decades in power. Karimov died in 2016 at age 78.
Under his successor, Shavkat Mirziyoyev, who had been Karimov’s prime minister, at least 20 political prisoners, including journalists and human rights activists, have been released. They included an editor and co-defendant of Ruzimuradov’s, Muhammad Bekjanov, who was freed last year.
Both men had been in exile in Ukraine when they were seized and taken back to Uzbekistan in 1999 in what human rights groups called a state-sponsored abduction by Uzbekistan’s feared secret police.
They were convicted of publishing an outlawed newspaper, Erk, or Freedom, which was regarded as part of a plot to overthrow the government.
While human rights groups welcomed the news of Ruzimuradov’s release, they said many anti-government critics remained incarcerated, including some scheduled for trial next week.
Swerdlow said thousands of Uzbeks also remained jailed for practicing Islam outside the confines demanded by the government.
This article originally appeared in The New York Times.