Press Service of the Osh Municipal Internal Affairs Department announced this Tuesday that the investigation had uncovered no evidence proving Uzbek secret services' involvement in assassination of journalist Alisher Saipov a week ago. This stand on the matter - or something like that - was predictable and actually predicted. Unfortunately, the Kyrgyz police wouldn't stop there. Acting with phenomenal ease and offering absolutely no corroborative evidence, it accused the assassinated journalist of contacts with the extremist underground and even said he had been on terrorists' payroll.

October 30. The Kyrgyzstan Interior Ministry published a press release concerning the investigation [click here for the Russian text of the document, translation will be available on request to ferghana@ferghana.ru]. It was with disgust and loathing that the assassinated journalist's friends and colleagues discovered that the document contained little truth but lots of lies. The general impression is that it is a verdict to a murderer, not interim report on an investigation, and that the latter is Alisher himself and not the assassin who shot him.

Alisher's colleagues told Ferghana.Ru what methods the investigation is using and to what ends. Since the day following the assassination officers of the Osh Municipal Internal Affairs Department and Organized Crime Department have been only looking for proof of Alisher's contacts with Hizb-ut-Takhrir and its activists.

Interrogation of Davron Nasibhonov of Sieyasat, the newspaper Saipov had founded and published, took three days. Every session lasted hours and ended late into the night. His apartment was searched. What were law enforcement agencies looking for? Hizb-ut-Takhrir flyers. Needless to say, not even a most thorough search would produce any.

October 28. Osh top cop Rustam Myrzamatov summoned Mezon-TV (NTM-24) Director Zhavlon Mirzahojayev and Hulkar Isamova, journalist and author of Resonance program dedicated to Alisher's memory broadcast the previous night. Enraged Myrzamatov kept screaming at the visitors who were accused of interfering with the investigation and finished the audience with the order to his retinue to "take a look at the TV channel's documents and find out who has been paying this lot."

Lawyers from Internews would reassure Mezon-TV journalists later that day that there could be absolutely no way for the TV program to constitute "interference with the investigation".

October 29. Chynara Tutashova, office manager of the Osh Media Resource Center, was summoned to the Organized Crime Department for interrogation. It was her first visit there, to be followed by another session with detectives shortly afterwards. Department Assistant Chief Mamatali Turgunbayev told Tutashova that she had better confess that she knew the identities of Saipov's assassins or the confession would be beaten out of her.

"The impression is that the authorities are deliberately compromising our friend and his name," Ferghana.Ru Chief Editor Daniil Kislov said. "A bona fide journalist that he was, Alisher did know some members of Hizb-ut-Tahrir and Islamic Movement of Uzbekistan. On the other hand, he always criticized them all - the former for distorting the teaching of Islam, the latter for murdering their brothers in faith. As for Tahir Yuldashev, Alisher regarded him as a scumbag and probably even an agent of secret services. He never received any money from the opposition or Islamic Movement of Uzbekistan. As for the grants from NED, these funds were always transparent and known to the authorities."

"Contacts with the outlawed Hizb-ut-Tahrir? And so what?" Kislov continued. "He also had contacts with Kurmanbek Bakiyev whom he interviewed and with lots of parliamentarians, former revolutionaries whose activity on the barricades he had covered in March 2005. Why not blame him for "contacts" with state officials then? And as for the trick with the spent cartridges, it is common knowledge after all that a firearm known to the police and actively sought is only used in crime whenever the user wants the cartridges to be found and identified... I'm afraid that the blame for the assassination will be pinned on someone involved in a wholly different crime or crimes. I insist on being given hard proof of what Kyrgyz law enforcement agencies claim to be the truth."

"There is something definitely wrong with the press release we are talking about," to quote Oleg Panfilov, Director of the Extreme Journalism Center. "First, the document is anything but professional because it reveals materials of the investigation or blows what is known as secrecy of investigation. Whoever heard of this openness in the early stages of investigation? Second, the document is politically motivated. It is not for the Interior Ministry to evaluate political sympathies of a citizen of Kyrgyzstan, Uzbekistan, or whatever other country."

"There is another nuance in the document I'd like to point out," Panfilov continued. "The mention of a meeting Saipov had with Yuldashev on the territory of Iran. It's like an intelligence report, you know. Where did the Interior Ministry get wind of it? Does it realize that its very action may foment a political scandal with the Islamic Republic of Iran as a country accused of offering shelter to a wanted terrorist? Last but not the least, the press release indicates that Saipov had archives - on paper and on the hard disk of his computer. So what? It's quite natural for a professional journalist. I have a great deal of religious literature too but I'm a scientist studying Central Asia!"

"What counts and what the press release all but proves is that it is not the people blamed for Saipov's assassination who are the genuine assassins, it is the authorities of Uzbekistan irked that Saipov was giving an unbiased and professional coverage of the situation in this country. As for his meetings with various people including Muhammad Salih, they only prove his professionalism. The impression I got is that the text of the press release was actually written in Tashkent," Panfilov said.

"If you ask me, this press release is absolute rubbish and all accusations - both with regard to me and to Saipov himself - absolutely groundless," journalist Shahida Tulyaganova said in London. "Even if they were stone-cold confident of Alisher's meetings with Yuldashev, why wouldn't they take measures then? Is it the way to run an investigation? ... The claims that Alisher gave shelter to Kabul Parpiyev are nothing but a bunch of lies! I knew Alisher well, and Parpiyev's latest interview was with both of us. I can tell you that even finding the man in the first place to interview him had been extremely difficult. How can they be saying Alisher was hiding him at his own place? He did not give anybody shelter and he did not meet with Yuldashev. He made a trip to Iran once to meet with our Uzbek refugees, former members of the Islamic Movement of Uzbekistan who had dropped out long ago. All these people were registered by the Iranian office of the UN Office of High Commissar for Refugees and that makes them quite legitimate, right? And what does it have to do with the assassination, anyway?"

Shahida Tulyaganova: Alisher never made a secret of whatever he was doing because he wrote about it in his pieces. That's our job. Using these wholly groundless accusations, the authorities do not even try to find the assassins and whoever pulled their strings.

Ferghana.Ru: Did you get a summons to the Interior Ministry?

Shahida Tulyaganova: I was summoned as a witness, and the session lasted three hours or so. Needless to say, I told the police everything I knew. Moreover, two other people and I were essentially the last to see Alisher alive. We were supposed to meet in Qorasuv and dine there. We left the office, leaving him there at work, and it turned out that he had less than half an hour to live. These other people and I volunteered to give the testimony and tell the police everything we knew. These two people and the driver (he is not even our regular driver, you know) are still interrogated. And in the absence of a lawyer, which is a direct violation!

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All of the Kyrgyz media community was stirred by assassination of Saipov in Osh. A forum on freedom of expression and meeting will take place in Bishkek on October 31.

Interior minister and chairman of the National Security State Committee, prosecutor general, Supreme Court chairman, acting mayor of Bishkek, state secretary, director of the presidential administration received invitations to the forum. Participants of the forum hope to listen to an investigation update from security ministers and answers to certain questions .

Ferghana.Ru will cover the future developments.