Uzbekistan’s Supreme Court commuted 19-year old Yuldash Kasymov’s death sentence to 20 years in prison in November 2005. Shortly after the Supreme Court’s decision, guards led Yuldash Kasymov out of his death row cell in Tashkent prison. “They read out the Court’s ruling to him. Yuldash Kasymov was in a state of shock; he could not believe what they were telling him. He thought they were joking and he was about to be executed,” said Tamara Chikunova, director of the human rights group Mothers against the Death Penalty and Torture. Yuldash Kasymov was moved to the prison in Andizhan.