The key facts
- Decree UP-160 of August 14, 2026 expands judicial control at the pre-trial stage from July 1, 2027.
- The judge will be able to request additional documents while preserving the secrecy of the investigation.
- In 2024, courts acquitted 723 people; charges against 14,991 persons were dropped or requalified.
The essence of the reform
From July 1, 2027, judicial control at the pre-trial stage in Uzbekistan is to expand. Under paragraph 9 of the presidential decree of August 14, 2026 (UP-160), when considering motions for the application of procedural coercive measures, the investigative judge will verify not only the legality and validity of detention but also the sufficiency of grounds for suspicion or for bringing charges. If in doubt, the judge may request additional documents while ensuring the secrecy of the investigation. The analysis of the reform was prepared by Dildora Bazarova, professor at the Department of Criminal Procedure Law of Tashkent State University of Law, Doctor of Legal Sciences, in an article for Gazeta. In her view, the main question is not the new term but what exactly the court must verify.
Suspicion and detention — two independent grounds
Article 47 of the CPC recognizes as a suspect a person against whom there is data on the commission of a crime, but it is insufficient for bringing them as an accused. Article 359 links this status to detention under Article 221 or to the existence of data giving grounds to suspect a person. Detention is regulated by Articles 220–221: it is possible if a person is caught committing a crime or immediately after it, eyewitnesses directly point to them, obvious traces of the crime are found on them or with them, or there is other data with additional conditions provided by law. Article 225 requires verifying the validity of detention and releasing the person if there are no grounds. Thus, data for suspicion does not in itself mean grounds for detention. A similar approach has been developed by the ECtHR: in Fox, Campbell and Hartley v. the United Kingdom the court indicated that reasonable suspicion presupposes facts or information capable of convincing an objective observer of a person's possible involvement, and in Murray v. the United Kingdom it emphasized that such data need not reach the level required for accusation or conviction.
From suspicion to accusation and referral of the case to court
Article 361 of the CPC does not contain the formula of a 'sufficient body of evidence,' but requires specifying the accusation: setting out the essence of the act, place, time, other essential circumstances and the criminal-law qualification. Taking into account Articles 47 and 226, this means a transition from an assumption of involvement to a concrete assertion of the committed act. Being brought as an accused does not complete the proof: the investigation continues, the accusation may change or be dropped, so grounds for accusation cannot be equated with grounds for referring the case to court. Under Article 375, the investigation ends when the investigator considers the evidence sufficient for an indictment; then the validity of the accusation is verified by the prosecutor, and after the case enters court, the judge determines whether there are sufficient grounds for trial. Article 82 of the CPC requires proving the same set of circumstances both for referring the case to court and for a verdict: the event and circumstances of the crime, its commission by the given person, the form of guilt, motive, purpose and other circumstances provided by law.
Conviction verdict and statistics
Article 463 of the CPC prohibits basing a conviction on assumptions: guilt must be proven in a trial. The Plenum of the Supreme Court clarifies that the court's conclusions must rest on reliable evidence after verifying the circumstances and eliminating substantial doubts and contradictions. According to Supreme Court statistics, in 2024 courts acquitted 723 people, and from the accusations against 14,991 persons articles were excluded or requalified which the Supreme Court called unjustifiably imputed by preliminary investigation bodies. The author notes that these data do not mean the illegality of every initial suspicion, but show that the conclusion of an investigation body is not equivalent to the final judicial conclusion.
What the decree will change and how the verification should look
The current CPC does not oblige the investigative judge to separately verify the sufficiency of evidence for recognizing a person as a suspect or accused: when deciding on a measure of restraint (Article 243), the status is taken as established, and the court assesses the grounds and necessity of the measure under Articles 236 and 242 — the risk of evasion, continuation of criminal activity, obstruction of establishing the truth, and the impossibility of a milder measure. The Plenum of the Supreme Court indicates that the court does not thereby consider the question of guilt. UP-160 is to change this: from July 1, 2027, the judge will separately verify the legality and validity of detention and the sufficiency of grounds for suspicion or accusation. In the author's opinion, the court should assess not the quantity of materials but their ability to objectively link a specific person to a specific crime; a ruling recognizing someone as a suspect does not prove such a link. The verification must not turn an interim hearing into a trial on the merits and must not prejudge the question of guilt. A separate question is the procedure for handling additional documents requested by the judge: the defense must have a real opportunity to familiarize itself with their essential content and present objections while respecting the secrecy of the investigation, otherwise the expansion of the court's activity may weaken adversarial proceedings.
Terminology and conclusions
UP-160 uses the expression 'justified suspicion' with the clarification Prima Facie, whereas in ECtHR practice, regarding initial deprivation of liberty, reasonable suspicion is primarily used. In the Anglo-American tradition, prima facie means an initially sufficient evidentiary basis capable of supporting a legal conclusion in the absence of rebuttal; the concepts overlap but are not synonyms. In the author's opinion, for legislation what matters more is not the borrowed name but the content of the verification: what facts the prosecution must present, what the judge verifies, and what remains outside their competence. The effectiveness of the reform will depend on the court's ability to see the factual basis behind the procedural document without going beyond its task at this stage. The Gazeta editorial board notes that its opinion may not coincide with that of the author.
