Uzbekistan ex-ruler's daughter 'forcibly removed' from her apartment, sent to prison after violating house arrest
{{#rendered}} {{/rendered}}The daughter of Uzbekistan's former leader has been detained and sent to prison after violating the terms of her five-year house arrest, authorities said on Tuesday.
Gulnara Karimova, a former diplomat and singer who was once a likely successor to her late father Islam Karimov, will spend the remainder of her sentence in prison after she repeatedly used the Internet, phones and left the house in violation of the terms of her sentence, said the prosecutor general's office.
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{{#rendered}} {{/rendered}}She was sentenced in 2017 to 10 years behind bars for fraud and money laundering, but her sentence was commuted to house arrest, according to the BBC.
Grégoire Mangeat, the lawyer for Karimova, said that the authorities had “forcibly removed” her from the flat on Tuesday and was taken to an unknown place.
“The Uzbek authorities continue to exert psychological and physical pressure on her to force her to withdraw her appeals and abandon all her rights and property in Switzerland,” Mangeat said on Twitter.
{{#rendered}} {{/rendered}}“We, her defense counsels, denounce these totally arbitrary methods,” he added. “For several months now, we have been unsuccessfully asking the Office of the Attorney General in Switzerland to commit an expert to establish the absence of the rule of law in Uzbekistan.”
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The woman’s daughter posted on Instagram pictures of what appeared to be Karimova being dragged out of the apartment by two men. Mangeat reposted the image as well.
{{#rendered}} {{/rendered}}Karimova’s father was the head of the local Communist Party in Uzbekistan and later ruled as an authoritarian president of the newly independent republic following the fall of the Soviet Union. He died in 2016 after ruling the country for 27 years.
Yet she fell out with her father in 2014 after she was detained by security forces and the allegations of financial wrongdoing, the BBC reported.
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{{#rendered}} {{/rendered}}Uzbekistan’s authorities reportedly said Karimova was part of a group that was in charge of assets worth over $1 billion across the world.