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November 15, 2005

Uzbekistan: Trial of "Islamists" Comes to A Close

The trial of the fifteen young men accused of being Islamists who led the uprising in May in the city of Andijan were given jail sentences yesterday, according to the BBC. The men all pleaded guilty at the beginning of the trial, and were sentenced to terms ranging from 14 years to 20 years. Five of the men received a 20 year sentence.

This trial is widely regarded as nothing more than a show trial, with the accused made to act as scapegoats. They are accused of causing the uprising which Uzbek security forces finished with a display of excessive force. The trial used the figure of 187 people dead, but the real figure is more than 500 civilians shot by Uzbek security forces.

We mentioned earlier how drugs may have been used to condition the individuals to accept guilty pleas, and how the leader of Uzbekistan's opposition party, Sanjar Umarov, has been apparently given psychotropic drugs by his jailers in prison.

Uzbekistan is a nation which clings to the old Soviet model of repression of the truth and facts. The BBC has recently announced it has had to close its offices in the capital, Tashkent, because of harrassment of the staff by the Uzbek authorities. The BBC's account of the Andijan massacre can be found here.

The Times also reports that the trial has been a "show" for the benefit of the authorities' image. The Times states that when the US government called for an investigation into the Andijan massacre, it was given a six month deadline to remove its troops from a military base near the Afghan border.

We described earlier the criticisms of Britain's former ambassador to Uzbekistan from 2002 to 2004, Craig Murray, who cast doubt on the Uzbek government's accounts of Islamic "terrorism" including being shown the scene of a "suicide bombing" by the authorities:

The physical evidence on the ground did not coincide with the official explanation. For example, each suicide bomber was alleged to be using explosives equivalent to 2kg of TNT. But nowhere, not even at the site of an alleged car bomb, was there a crater, or even a crack in a paving stone. In one small triangular courtyard area a bomb had allegedly killed six policemen. But windows on all sides, at between 10 and 30 metres from the alleged blast, were not damaged; nor was a tree in the middle of the yard. The body of one of the alleged suicide bombers was unmarked, save for a small burn about the size of a walnut on her stomach.

Posted by Giraldus Cambrensis at November 15, 2005 10:35 PM

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