Al-Qaeda-linked group faces up to 20 years imprisonment

The Uzbek Supreme Court postponed on Monday the sentencing of 13 men and two women, charged with terrorism aiming to establish an Islamic khalifat in Central Asia's largest country. The group is also charged with organising an extremist religious group and attempting to overthrow the constitutional regime of Uzbekistan. The accused, aged between 22 and 40, have been found guilty of links to a wave of suicide attacks and shootouts with police that killed at least 47 people in Uzbekistan in late March and early April, in the capital Tashkent and the western city of Bukhara. Murad Salikhov, the public prosecutor, dropped a request for the death penalty in his summing up on Friday, saying that those who actually carried out the terrorist acts had either blown themselves up or had been killed, and furthermore, defendants actively cooperated with police. The prosecutor's demand for prison rather than the death penalty, was reportedly received with immense relief by most of the defendants as they had told the court that they were "expecting capital punishment for their crimes". Relatives and friends of those found guilty, who are not allowed to attend the trial, reject the accusations. "The last time I saw my son was six months ago when he was heading to his studies at a medical college. Now every day I stand here from morning till evening," the mother of one of the defendants told IRIN outside the police cordon that sealed off the Supreme Court building in Tashkent. Authorities accuse her son of acting as doctor to the group who perpetrated the attacks that some observers say were an expression of extreme discontent with the regime of President Islam Karimov. "He was about to be a doctor, a man who treats people, not kills. Now Uzbek TV shows him as a terrorist every day, how I can believe that?" she asked, with bitter tears in her eyes. The court case, which had lasted almost a month, was interrupted by a new string of attacks by suicide bombers targeting the US and Israeli embassies buildings and the general prosecutor's office on 30 July, killing four and injuring seven. The attacks have been used by Tashkent as justification for a crackdown on Islamists and opposition supporters that has led to widespread torture and detention without trial, according to Human Rights Watch (HRW). Uzbek authorities blamed Hizb ut-Tahrir, which seeks to create a medieval Muslim state in Central Asia by non-violent means, for both the spring and late July attacks, accusing the group of serving as a breeding ground for Uzbek radical groups. President Islam Karimov, in a televised address to the nation at the end of July, said they had conclusive evidence that international radical extremist organisations, including Hizb ut-Tahrir, are behind the blasts. Later the Uzbek foreign office press service released written testimonies from some of the defendants where they claimed to be Hizb ut-Tahrir members. Observers say authorities should give more freedom to young, impressionable Uzbeks, to prevent them falling prey to Islamic radicals. Uzbekistan has frequently been criticised for only allowing state-authorised clerics with little popular support, to run religious activities. According to Bahodir Musaev, an independent political analyst, the government's crackdown on religious fundamentalists has resulted in a generation of Uzbeks prepared to embrace violence as a means of resistance. "At the moment they have been driven deep into the corner, where the only way to survive is to resist," Musaev told IRIN. During the hearings, five of the defendants testified that they received training on intelligence gathering, combat with police, suicide bombings and explosives from Arab instructors in Waziristan, Pakistan. One of them said their group leader, Najmiddin Jamolov, wanted by Uzbek police since 1994, had close links with Al-Qaeda and Taliban leaders. Six of the defendants testified that they have received weapons training in staging posts that the group had set up in neighbouring Kazakhstan. Rights groups alleged the use of torture against the defendants in return for promises of more lenient sentences. "Based on our monitors and interviews with relatives of the defendants, we believe that confessions from these people had been extracted by torture," Surat Ikramov, head of the Initiative Group of Independent Human Rights Defenders in Uzbekistan, told IRIN. In 2002, a United Nations Special Rapporteur on Torture found that its use by Uzbekistan's security forces was "systematic". "I am here [in the cage] because of my true love for Islam," said one of the defendants who earlier asked for the death penalty. "I would rather prefer to be shot in front of the nation than to see devoted Muslim women suffer in the jails," Erkin Aslonov, 31, told the judges. According to HRW, Uzbekistan, since it become independent following the collapse of former Soviet Union in 1991, has jailed more than 6,000 people, most of them Hizb ut-Tahrir members. But authorities say there are less than two and a half thousand religious prisoners in the country. Defendants said poor religious education in schools and the state's unwillingness to engage in dialogue with those who worship outside state sanctioned Islam might be driving many young people to follow radical trends of Islam. "Before joining this group I went to talk to an Imam in a local mosque to share my thoughts on the religious situation in the country," said defendant Aslonov. "But he refused to talk to me for fear of being arrested. If he had convinced me that I was on the wrong path, I wouldn't be here today," he said. According to campaigners, 70 more people linked to the spring attacks, which involved Central Asia's first suicide-bombers, might face farther trials in different regions.