EU imposes visa ban, arms embargo on Uzbekistan

Reuters November 14 European Union governments banned arms sales to Uzbekistan on Monday and imposed a one-year visa ban on 12 top Uzbek officials they hold responsible for the deaths of up to 500 people in May, the European Council said. The list of officials banned from entering the EU includes Interior Minister Zakirdzhon Almatov, Defence Minister Kadyr Gulyamov and the head of the National Security Service, Rustam Inoyatov. The European Council, the EU decision-making body grouping member governments, said the visa ban was "aimed at those individuals who are directly responsible for the indiscriminate and disproportionate use of force in Andizhan and for the obstruction of an independent inquiry". The EU arms embargo covers arms, military equipment and "other equipment that might be used for internal repression". Witnesses in the Uzbek town of Andizhan on May 13, including a Reuters correspondent, said troops opened fire on a crowd of men, women and children in the main square. Eyewitnesses told Reuters troops killed hundreds and shot dead some wounded. The authorities said the troops had killed 187 people, mainly "foreign-paid terrorists", for trying to overthrow the constitutional order. Earlier on Monday Uzbekistan's highest court found 15 men guilty of an Islamist terrorist plot in Andizhan, and sentenced them to between 14 and 20 years in prison after what one human rights campaigner at the court called a show trial. The EU said the measures would be in place for a year and would be reviewed with regard to the conduct and outcome of the trials, which ended on Monday. "The Council decided to adopt these measures in the light of the excessive, disproportionate and indiscriminate use of force by the Uzbek security forces during the Andizhan events and following the refusal of Uzbek authorities to allow an independent international inquiry," the statement said. While Uzbek President Islam Karimov has been widely criticised in the West over Andizhan, on Monday he signed an agreement in Moscow with his Russian counterpart Vladimir Putin, pledging to help each other in case of a threat to security.