Secret police in Kyrgyzstan have deported and banned a jailed pastor who suffered a traumatic brain injury from torture, according to rights group Forum 18.
National Security Committee (NSC) officers deported the Rev. Pavel Shreider, 66, on April 9, Forum 18 reported. Shreider’s wife, Nelya, chose to leave the country with her husband, who was born in Kyrgyzstan but holds a Russian passport.
“They put him in a car, took him to the land border and banned him from re-entering the country,” an unnamed acquaintance of Shreider told Forum 18. “There were no deportation documents, and they put no mark in his passport.”
Forum 18 reported that the True and Free Reform Adventist pastor is now seeking asylum elsewhere, though he prefers to remain in his home country of Kyrgyzstan. NSC secret police declined to answer Forum 18’s inquiries on May 26 regarding the deportation.
On March 25, the Supreme Court in Bishkek commuted the remainder of the pastor’s three-year prison term to a fine equal to three months of an average wage. Prison authorities freed him the same day, and Shreider reluctantly paid the fine. While authorities initially expected Shreider to pay for his own deportation, NSC officers did not demand any money on the day they expelled him.
The deportation followed months of severe medical decline for the pastor while in state custody.
Vera Shreider, the pastor’s daughter, appealed to Prison No. 21 officials on Sept. 12, pleading for medical care for her father. On Sept. 22, prison chief Major Azat Kudaybergenov informed Shreider’s relatives in a letter that doctors had examined the pastor multiple times and diagnosed him with a “traumatic brain injury” that resulted in “cognitive impairment.”
Prison authorities on Sept. 25 transferred Shreider from Prison No. 21, where they had held him for 10 months, to a secure medical unit at Prison No. 31 in the capital city of Bishkek.
“As also seen from the official medical examination paper, he has developed encephalopathy, which is brain damage, and which has affected his general health,” the family said in a statement to Forum 18. “We already saw him very weak during the Sept. 9 appeal hearing in the courtroom and in writing demanded the prison authorities to transfer him to the medical unit for treatment. They only transferred him more than two weeks later.”
Shreider was serving a three-year sentence on what supporters called fabricated charges of “inciting enmity.” The case began in November 2024, when NSC secret police raided the pastor’s home in Bishkek, along with the homes of 10 church members, before making arrests.
Forum 18 reported that NSC officers tortured Shreider and three other church members during interrogations following their arrests. Police officials have denied the abuse.
“Five officers gave me blows on my head, chest and gave me kicks in my spine from behind,” Shreider wrote in a November 2024 complaint to the National Center for the Prevention of Torture. He added that officers “hit me with an iron pipe to force me to confess that I committed crimes.”
NSC officers also used a stun gun to try to coerce church member Igor Tsoy to write a statement against Shreider, according to Forum 18. The stun gun caused Tsoy multiple injuries, but he refused the officers’ demands.
The treatment of the church group drew international condemnation. On July 23, five U.N. Special Rapporteurs, including Nazila Ghanea, Special Rapporteur on Freedom of Religion or Belief, wrote to the government citing the arrests, detentions and alleged torture of the True and Free Reform Adventist Church members.
“Serious allegations of torture and ill-treatment have been made with regard to Mr. Schreider and the other male members of the congregation during their detention,” the Special Rapporteurs stated to officials. “It is reported that the male and female members of the group witnessed officers striking the heads and bodies of the seven male members of the group...It is reported that Mr. Schreider and Mr. Tsoi were additionally subjected to strangulation with cellophane bags and the use of tasers.”
