Uzbekistan, Tashkent, Feb. 5 / Trend D.Azizov /
By January 10 this year, the Amnesty Act, adopted by the Uzbek Senate (the upper house of parliament) in early December 2012 in connection with the 20th anniversary of the Constitution, covered 840 prisoners, the Foreign Ministry press service said.
According to the press service, up till now 837 prisoners were released from punishment, including more than 200 women. Of these, more than a dozen were prisoners under 18. One man was amnestied due to disability and more than five hundred amnestied were first time offenders, by accident or due to a minor social crime.
The Senate's amnesty act came into force on the date of publication, December 5 2012 and must be executed within three months.
The Uzbek Senate first adopted an Amnesty Act in 2005 in connection with the thirteenth anniversary of the Constitution.
The right to make a decision on an amnesty was passed to the Senate by the head of state starting with the operation of a two-chamber parliament in Uzbekistan in 2005. Previously this was the exclusive prerogative of the President of Uzbekistan. From 2008, an Amnesty is announced in Uzbekistan according to courts' decisions.
According to Uzbek Prosecutor General's Office, in 2012 the act of amnesty in connection with the nineteenth anniversary of the Constitution covered more than 9,600 people. Some of them were released from serving a criminal sentence, while others had sentences reduced or criminal prosecutions were stopped in regard to the rest.