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| - A popular Islamic cleric jailed during a harsh crackdown on religious believers in Uzbekistan has been released after spending 15 years in jail, he told AFP on Friday. Rukhiddin Fakhriddinov, who was sentenced to 17 years in jail on extremism charges in 2005, said he was released in an amnesty that went into effect on Thursday and also saw a poet and an activist freed. Fakhriddinov, 53, was a popular cleric who worked in a mosque in the capital Tashkent and the charges against him -- which he refutes -- came during an intensifying state crackdown on independent religious figures. The former imam told AFP that he would now have to give 20 percent of the salary from his next job to the state for two years as part of the terms of his release. His conviction excludes him from future work as an imam and he said he has already refused the offer of a job in a factory. Fakhriddinov's arrest came the same year that Uzbek security forces fired on civilians protesting in the eastern town of Andijan, in a move rights activists said left far more people dead than the official toll of 187. The secular and authoritarian regime of late leader Islam Karimov was notorious for repressing believers who strayed from state-endorsed Islam. His successor Shavkat Mirziyoyev has pledged greater religious freedoms. "I have a wife and six children who lived in poverty during my incarceration," Fakhriddinov told AFP by telephone. "I need to restore my documents and attend to my health. I lost all my teeth while I was in prison." Steve Swerdlow, a human rights lawyer and Associate Professor of Human Rights at the University of Southern California called Fakhriddinov's incarceration "a harrowing tale of abuse" that included torture, in comments emailed to AFP. Swerdlow noted that while the Uzbek government has released a number of prominent political prisoners since former prime minister Mirziyoyev took charge in 2016, movement on religious prisoners has been slow. "Fahriddinov's freedom took longer and has been more hard-fought, likely reflecting (Uzbekistan's) reticence to embrace its stated commitment to increase religious freedom," Swerdlow said. Mirziyoyev has been credited with admitting to the problem of torture and clamping down on forced labour since coming to power after Karimov's death, but the political system remains tightly-controlled. Activist Rustam Abdumannapov and poet and blogger Akrom Malikov were also among the 113 prisoners released as part of the amnesty marking independence day. sk-cr/jbr/pma
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