Uzbek who spread recordings of Western radio jailed

Reuters November 25 An Uzbek man convicted of membership of a banned Muslim group and spreading "extremism" through recordings of Western radio stations has been jailed for seven years, a human rights activist said on Tuesday. Abduvokhid Abduvakhabov, 25, was sentenced on Wednesday and will serve his sentence in a maximum security prison, activist Surat Ikramov, who monitored the case, told Reuters. "The judge said that starting in 1997 Abduvakhabov had been spreading recordings of news reports by foreign media, including the Uzbek services of Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty, Voice of America and the BBC," said Ikramov. The recordings contained "extremist ideas" and threatened state security and public order, Ikramov quoted the judge as saying. Human rights groups say Uzbekistan's veteran President Islam Karimov operates a repressive regime. He defends his tough methods by saying he is fighting an insurgency by Islamic radicals. Abduvakhabov was accused of following Wahhabism, an austere teaching of Sunni Islam that is the official creed of Saudi Arabia but is banned in ex-Soviet Uzbekistan, where only state-sponsored Islam is tolerated. "Abduvakhabov pleaded not guilty," Ikramov said. "The trial itself was riddled with various procedural violations." An official at the district court in the capital Tashkent that handled the case declined to comment. Though a U.S. ally in Washington's war on terror, Uzbekistan has faced increasing Western criticism of its human rights record, the outlawing of political opposition and centralised economic policies. Human rights bodies say there are at least 6,000 political and religious prisoners in the Central Asian state bordering Afghanistan. Karimov said a series of suicide bombings in Uzbekistan this spring and summer underlined the threat from radical Islam.