Weekly news wrap

The Uzbek Prosecutor-General Rashidjon Qodirov said on Monday that a series of terrorists attacks which struck the country in March, April and July were the work of the outlawed Hizb-ut Tahrir Islamic movement, local media reports said. "The investigation has grounds to announce, on the basis of watertight evidence, that international radical and extremist organisations, including Hizb-ut Tahrir, are behind them [the attacks]," he said. A moderate earthquake rattled the Tajik and Uzbek capitals on Tuesday, but caused no casualties or damage, the AP reported. Measuring 4.0 on the Richter scale, the quake shook the Tajik capital Dushanbe at 6:48 a.m. local time, the Tajik emergency agency said, The quake was also felt in the Uzbek capital, Tashkent, with a preliminary magnitude of 3.0 on the Richter scale, the Uzbek Seismology Institute reported. The epicentre of the quake was in the Hindu Kush mountains of Afghanistan, 160 km southeast of Dushanbe and 520 km southeast of Tashkent. It had a magnitude 6.0 at its epicentre. Also on Tuesday, the US-based NGO Human Rights Watch (HRW) accused the UN Security Council of disregarding human rights violations committed by countries combating "terrorism". "Governments around the world are using the global campaign against terrorism to crack down on human rights," said Joanna Weschler, UN advocacy director for the watchdog group. "The UN Security Council has been conspicuously silent about this dangerous trend." The HRW briefing paper, "Hear No Evil, See No Evil: The UN Security Council’s Approach to Human Rights Violations in the Global Counter-Terrorism Effort" documents how some countries, including Uzbekistan, have violated human rights in their efforts to combat terrorism. In Kazakhstan, a leading opposition leader jailed on corruption charges, which were allegedly politically motivated, would be released on probation, a Kazakh court ruled on Tuesday. Galymzhan Zhakiyanov, leader of the Democratic Choice party, was told by the court in the northern town of Kushmurun that he could serve the remainder of his seven-year jail term at home, the AP reported, quoting Gulzhan Yergaliyeva, the party's senior leader. Under Kazakh law, a prisoner is eligible for early release after serving one-third of his sentence, including pre-trial detention. Opposition and human rights activists claimed Zhakiyanov's conviction in 2002 on charges of corruption and abuse of power as governor of the Pavlodar region was part of a crackdown on dissent by President Nursultan Nazarbayev. Democratic Choice, which was formed in 2001 by a group of young reformers, is the country's most radical opposition party. On Wednesday, the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE) announced it was opening an election observation mission in Central Asia's largest state. The OSCE's Warsaw-based Office for Democratic Institutions and Human Rights (ODIHR) plan to observe Kazakhstan's parliamentary elections scheduled for 19 September. The mission, headed by Ambassador Robert Barry from the United States, includes a 12-member core team based in the capital Astana and largest city Almaty and 16 long-term international observers deployed throughout the country. The mission will assess the election process against international standards agreed to by all OSCE participating states, as well as against national legislation, the OSCE said. The Kazakh electoral body reported on Tuesday that 308 candidates had been registered out of 670 people who submitted their documents, adding that the registration process would end on 18 August. Meanwhile, the Bulgarian-based Turkmen Helsinki Foundation reported on Sunday that a number of former government officials had reportedly been arrested following the escape of the head of the food industry association, Kakajan Ovezov and former governor of Mary province Aman Ataev in June 2004. The group said that Rejep Pukhanov (former governor of western Balkan province), Habibula Durdyev (former governor of Dashoguz province) and Kumysh Bazarova (deputy governor of Dashoguz province), who had either remained under home arrest or were "serving corrective labour terms" in remote areas, had been arrested in an effort to prevent them from fleeing the country. Turkmenistan's leader Saparmurat Niyazov is known for often firing his government officials for alleged failure in their work; subsequently sending them to work in fields or construction sites as punishment.