Watchdog

Amnesty International says nearly 200,000 people have signed a petition calling on Uzbek President Islam Karimov to immediately release a woman it calls a “prisoner of conscience.”

The signatures in support of 49-year-old Dilorom Abdukadirova were collected in 123 countries as part of the organization’s “Stop Torture” campaign, Amnesty International U.K. said in an October 20 statement.

Amnesty describes Abdukadirova as a vegetable seller and "prisoner of conscience" serving an 18-year prison sentence for participating in a protest for better economic conditions in the Central Asian nation.

She originally fled the country in 2005 after Uzbek forces fired on protesters in the town of Andijon, killing hundreds of people, according to witnesses, but was arrested in 2010 after returning to reunite with her family, Amnesty says.

Seventy-three-year-old Russian human rights activist Lyudmila Bogatenkova has been released from detention after two nights in jail in southern Russia, according to her lawyer.

Bogatenkova, chairwoman of the Budyonnovsk branch of the Soldiers Mothers Committee human-rights NGO, was released from custody in Stavropol on October 20 after signing a statement that she would not leave the country, the lawyer told journalists.

Bogatenkova faces charges of fraud stemming from four-year-old allegations of financial wrongdoing.

The chairman of Russia's presidential rights council, Mikhail Fedotov, said he is personally monitoring Bogatenkova's case.

Rights council member Sergei Krivenko told Interfax that Bogatenkova clearly presents no threat to society and that taking her into custody "looks like revenge for her human-rights activity."

In August, Bogatenkova handed over to the presidential rights council documentation connected with the alleged deaths of dozens of Russian soldiers near a military training camp in the Rostov region, near Russia's border with the separatist regions of eastern Ukraine.

The Soldiers' Mothers network has publicly alleged that Russian soldiers have died or been wounded in Ukraine and that thousands have served there during the past six months or so.

Based on reporting by Dozhd TV and Interfax