BISHKEK: Soyuzbek Kaldarov, sentenced to death in 1999 for the murder of two policemen, is trapped in a legal limbo. His home country of Kyrgyzstan imposed a moratorium on firing-squad executions in 1998 so he cannot be put to death, but the courts continue to hand down death sentences, leaving Kaldarov and others with indefinite stretches on death row.

Around 200 inmates are stuck in the same legal vacuum, waiting in crumbling Soviet-era cells where tuberculosis and drug abuse are rife.

A bear-like 29-year-old with unsmiling eyes, Kaldarov says the thought of death rarely leaves him.

“I wouldn’t wish my enemies to die in such suffering,” he says slowly, staring blankly at the floor of his gloomy underground prison cell in the Kyrgyz capital Bishkek.

A spate of riots in jails last year threatened to trigger a national crisis when inmates shot a member of parliament who was visiting one institution.

The mutinies in at least five prisons — not including Kaldarov’s — lasted for two weeks in October, causing prison wardens to flee. The violence was eventually quelled by troops who stormed the jails, killing four inmates.

Although the unrest briefly drew attention to decrepit prisons in the mountainous state northwest of China, Kyrgyzstan has lurched from crisis to crisis since its former President Askar Akayev fled violent protests a year ago, and the subject was soon forgotten.

President Kurmanbek Bakiyev, who came to power after Akayev was ousted, has vowed to replace the death penalty with life sentences. But critics say the new leadership has largely neglected the issue.

“We have to decide on the death penalty once and for all: yes or no,” said Kubatbek Baibolov, a member of parliament. “We can’t continue to hang between heaven and earth.”

Terrorism, murder and the rape of minors all still carry theoretical death penalties that are not carried out.

International rights groups have long called on Central Asian leaders to improve conditions for prisoners.

In Kyrgyzstan, tuberculosis has killed more than 70 death row inmates in the past seven years.—Reuters