EurasiaNet
August 18

Uzbekistan's National Security Service announced at a 6 August news conference that eight activists from the Islamic Movement of Uzbekistan (IMU) who were arrested in Pakistan are now giving evidence in Tashkent. Afghan authorities handed over the suspected terrorists to Uzbek officials in late May.

All the activists in custody are alleged to have been actively involved with military and terrorist operations on the territory of Tajikistan and Afghanistan, and to have maintained contacts with Al Qaeda fighters. The IMU, which has links to Al Qaeda and Afghanistan’s Taliban movement, is banned in Uzbekistan and has come under serious pressure from Uzbek authorities.

The Uzbek government blames the IMU for border incursions during the past few years and a series of explosions in the Uzbek capital of Tashkent in 1999. Sixteen people were killed and more than 50 injured in those attacks. The group has also claimed responsibility for kidnapping several foreigners, including four American mountain climbers.

In custody, alleged IMU member Hamidulla Kudratov admitted that he had taken part in combat operations against Russian troops in the breakaway republic of Chechnya. He told Uzbek officials that he had undergone training in a camp run by the notorious Jordanian warlord Khattab in Serjen-Yurt in early January 1999. Khattab is believed to have been killed earlier this year. Kudratov told investigators that he had also taken part in an August 1999 armed attack on the southern Russian republic of Dagestan.

Kudratov indicated that he had been wounded in Botlikh and then treated in Tbilisi, Georgia. The suspected IMU fighter told authorities that he made his way into Afghanistan in 2000, where he learned to lay mines and explosives in a training camp in the Afghan town of Mazar-e Sharif under the tutelage of Al Qaeda

Pakistani police captured Kudratov in Karachi in early June and turned him over to U.S. officials, who later handed him over to Afghan authorities.

Another IMU fighter extradited to Uzbekistan is Ilhom Mamajonov, who said that he had taken part in military actions on the territory of Tajikistan, Kyrgyzstan, and Afghanistan. Last year in November, Mamajonov said, his group was surrounded by troops of the anti-Taliban coalition.

U.S. investigators questioned both men before handing them over to Uzbek authorities. U.S. officials said the two men had been involved in the Islamic opposition’s activities since the late 1990s. Both men claimed to have abandoned their activity with the IMU some time ago but said they could not return home because they feared prosecution from Uzbek authorities and reprisals from their fellow fighters.

National Security Service official Rashid Avezmetov, who is leading the investigation, told reporters that the inquiry started two months ago and was expected to conclude in a month.

After the bomb blasts in Tashkent in February 1999, the Uzbek government took a harsh stance in its war against terrorism, persecuting overtly religious people and members of the so-called Hizb ut-Tahrir international organization and IMU. The authorities called fundamentalism the most significant threat to national security.

Hizb ut-Tahrir is a secretive organization that aims to create a caliphate ruled by the Islamic law of Sharia that would unite all Muslims. It has networks throughout the Middle East and the former Soviet republics of Central Asia and Azerbaijan. It was founded in Palestine in the early 1950s by the Arab theologian Takydin Nabahani. The group denies the authorities’ claim that it advocates violent methods for political change.

International human rights groups have condemned the arrest of religious people by the Uzbek government as persecution. Human rights activists claim that the crackdown has led to the illegal detention and torture of many peaceful worshippers. Thousands of innocent young men have been jailed for alleged membership in the banned group, according to human rights observers.

The Independent Organization for Human Rights in Uzbekistan (IOHRU), and the Interior Ministry agree that approximately 4,200 suspected Hizb ut-Tahrir activists are now in prison. Most are serving long sentences of up to 20 years for crimes, such as violating the country’s constitution, running prohibited organizations, and distributing rebellious pamphlets.

According to an 8 August Associated Press article, each month many prisoners die in Uzbek prisons because of mistreatment and diseases such as tuberculosis. Last week, the bodies of two prisoners jailed for membership in the banned Islamic group Hizb ut-Tahrir were returned to their families for burial after dying in custody.

Human rights activists say that Muzaffar Avazov and Khusniddin Olimov were beaten and tortured by the prison officers for refusing to abandon their religious convictions and attempting to practice Islam in prison. Both were held in the Zhaslyk penal colony, located in Karakalpakstan republic. In May, Khusnuddin Khikmatov also died in the same colony, three months after being transferred there.

Today, security officials in Uzbekistan say that they have effectively suppressed the activities of the banned Islamic fundamentalist group. The anti-terrorism department claims that the remaining members have gone into hiding, and that the group has moved its bases into neighboring Kyrgyzstan, Kazakhstan, and Tajikistan.

Many international observers fear that the Uzbek leadership’s heavy-handed policies are fuelling discontent and creating a pool of potential recruits for radical Islamic groups in the region. Uzbekistan is considered to be one of the most repressive Central Asian states but has emerged as a key ally of the United States. Fifteen hundred U.S. troops are currently deployed at an air base in Khanabad in southern Uzbekistan.

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