Twelve citizens of Uzbekistan, one from Kyrgyzstan, and one from Russia, who are being held in a pretrial-detention center in Ivanovo, have declared a hunger strike. The Uzbeks were arrested in June on suspicion of taking part in the mid-May violence in the Uzbek city of Andijon. In an interview with Ekho Moskvy on 29 September, Vitalii Ponomarev of Memorial said that only one of those in custody was even in Andijon at the time and this was because he was required to go back to have his passport changed after his 45th birthday. According to Memorial, the Russian citizen Khatam Khadzhimatov has been held for three months without a court order, which is a violation of the Russian Constitution. Memorial believes that Russian authorities are ignoring obvious violations of legal norms out of \"political sympathy for the regime of [Uzbek President Islam] Karimov.\" (RFE/RL)