Turkmenistan jails green activist for five years

ALMATY (Reuters) - A Turkmen court has jailed a local environmental activist for five years, U.S.-based Human Rights Watch said, calling the charges against him "bogus".

"The trial of the activist, Andrei Zatoka, violated international fair trial standards," Human Rights Watch (HRW) said in a statement late on Thursday (www.hrw.org).

Zatoka was arrested in the city of Dashoguz last week after being attacked by a stranger at a food market, HRW said. He was then accused of causing bodily harm to a passer-by.

"These charges seem unfounded and the trial was patently unfair," HRW quoted its regional official Rachel Denber as saying. "Zatoka should be released immediately, and there should be an independent investigation into the incident."

Zatoka, a biologist, ran an environment protection group shut down by the government in 2003. The co-founder of the group, Farid Tukhbatullin, now lives in exile in Europe and monitors human rights abuses in Turkmenistan.

Rights groups say the government of the reclusive ex-Soviet republic tolerates no dissent and routinely locks up activists, a charge it denies.

In 2006, a Turkmen court handed down a suspended sentence to Zatoka for possessing and dealing in arms and dangerous substances, which Rights Watch said were trumped-up charges. He has also been barred from leaving the country.

(Writing by Olzhas Auyezov, editing by Paul Casciato)