Weekly news wrap

The Uzbek trial of 15 people allegedly involved in a series of suicide bombings and violence in March that left more than 40 people dead resumed on Tuesday, international media reported. The trial originally began in July, but was adjourned on 9 August after suicide bombers staged new attacks outside the US and Israeli embassies and the office of the chief prosecutor in Tashkent. Olimjon Usarov, a spokesman for the Uzbek Supreme Court, reportedly said half of the defendants, who had already been questioned, pleaded guilty. The news comes less than a week after Tashkent had secretly executed two men despite requests by the United Nations Human Rights Committee examining the convictions, that the executions be postponed, Amnesty International (AI) said on Saturday. Azizbek Karimov, convicted of terrorism and religious extremism and Yusuf Jumayev, convicted of murdering three relatives, were executed on 10 August, AI said. Both had sent complaints of torture and ill-treatment by investigators to the UN committee, which monitors implementation of the international covenant on civil and political rights. The committee had asked that the executions be postponed while it considered the cases. Tajikistan had received some 43,000 mt of humanitarian aid over the past seven months, the Tajik news agency Avesta reported on Wednesday. The country's state agency of statistics said Dushanbe received aid worth US $37.4 million from 31 countries, subsequently sent to regions that suffered from natural disasters, earlier this year. In Kazakhstan, the country's new information minister, Altynbek Sarsenbayev, proposed a media bill on Wednesday that he said would guarantee freedom of speech in Central Asia's largest state, the AP reported. The proposed legislation would ease media registration rules, ban government agencies from holding majority stakes in media organisations and prevent monopolies in the mass media, Sarsenbayev explained. The bill would also decriminalise libel laws and limit the amount of damages people could demand in law suits targeting media organisations, a tool often used in the region to penalise independent media outlets for critical reporting. Kyrgyzstan is expected to receive $40 million annually from the Asian Development Bank (ADB) as poverty reduction aid over the two years period starting from 2005, local media reported on Thursday, quoting Ashraf Malik, head of the ADB mission in the country, as saying. Poverty was decreasing in the country, he said, noting a decrease from 44.4 percent in 2002 to 40.8 percent in 2003. Meanwhile, officials in Turkmenistan announced plans to release 9,000 prisoners in October under an annual amnesty programme, the News Central Asia news site reported on Thursday. The amnesty, traditionally implemented on the Night of Power (Laila-tul-Qadr) in the Islamic holy month of Ramadan, has been brought forward this year to coincide with the Independence Day celebrations in October. Although there are no exact figures on the number of prisoners in Turkmenistan today, it is estimated that the release of 9,000 inmates would decrease the country's prison population by about 50 percent. Under the annual amnesty programme, usually first offenders, women, juvenile delinquents, elderly prisoners and those prisoners who are the sole breadwinners of their families are eligible for release. In common with previous amnesties, this one doesn't cover political prisoners and prisoners of conscious, however. Also in Turkmenistan, President Saparmurat Niyazov has approved a contract with Bouygues Batiment International, a branch of a French construction group Bouygues, which has been awarded a number of lucrative construction contracts in the authoritarian state, to build a $29 million ice palace in the largely desert but energy-rich nation. Construction is expected to begin in November and be completed by February 2006, official media reports said on Wednesday. The ice palace, which would be linked to the capital by a cable car, would be built just 5 km from Ashgabat. Upon completion, it would be the latest of the autocratic leader's pet projects, including huge sports complexes, parks, mosques and a hotel for horses.