Saida Mirziyoyeva called the abuse of a 5-year-old girl monstrous, announced tougher penalties

Saida Mirziyoyeva called the abuse of a 5-year-old girl monstrous and announced a tightening of punishment

The Head of the Administration of the President of Uzbekistan, Saida Mirziyoyeva, called the sexual abuse of a 5-year-old girl in a kindergarten in the Namangan region monstrous.

"I was briefed on the tragedy that occurred in Namangan. Upon learning about this, I felt real anger," she wrote on her Telegram channel.

"For such monstrous crimes, in my opinion, the death penalty should be applied. Since the current law does not provide for it, we are preparing proposals to amend the legislation in order to tighten responsibility to the maximum extent possible," she reported.

"All necessary instructions have been given to the relevant authorities. The criminal will face the most severe punishment. As well as all those who allowed this to happen, showed negligence, and failed to protect the child," Saida Mirziyoyeva stated.

It was reported that the suspect in the crime is a 52-year-old supply manager of the kindergarten and a neighbor of the victim's family. The child's mother said that her daughter had become afraid of the kindergarten. According to her, the cameras in the kindergarten were not working, and the suspect's relatives offered her money to withdraw the police report.

The suspect may have been preparing for the crime and committing it over a long period of time. The director of the institution reported that she was on leave, while the teacher claimed that she never left the children unattended.

According to the director, law enforcement officers came to the kindergarten on September 11. Information about this appeared in the media in the 20s of September.

The Ministry of Preschool and School Education only announced on September 26 the creation of a special working group to study the incident. On the same day, the Prosecutor General's Office announced the initiation of a criminal case, but the announcement did not specify the date of initiation.

In March, President Shavkat Mirziyoyev, by his decree, approved measures to strengthen the protection of the rights of women and children, as well as to prevent cases of harassment and violence against them.

The document, among other things, instructed to prepare within a three-month period (by June) a draft law on introducing life imprisonment for the rape of a person under the age of 14. However, such punishment was envisioned for those previously convicted of crimes against the sexual freedom of minors, engaging in sexual intercourse with them, and committing lewd acts.

In April, the Legislative Chamber of the Oliy Majlis passed a law transferring cases of crimes against the sexual freedom of women and children to the prosecutor's office. The decision was made due to the low quality of investigation, loss of evidence, and high workload on investigators of the Ministry of Internal Affairs. It was reported that about 1,000 inspections of crime scenes were conducted by employees without a legal education. However, the draft document was not published for discussion. The founder of the Nemolchi.uz project, Irina Matvienko, stated that there were gaps in the adopted law. In her opinion, a number of crimes against children may remain outside the jurisdiction of the prosecutor's office.