Prosecutors want long jail terms in Andizhan trial

Reuters October 26 Prosecutors asked Uzbekistan's high court on Wednesday to hand out jail terms of up to 20 years to 15 men accused of plotting a bloody rebellion in Andizhan in May. Human rights groups have accused the government of staging the trial and forcing bogus confessions from the defendants to cover up its role in what they call a massacre. Witnesses say troops killed up to 500 people when they fired at protesters. Official accounts and the accused -- who all pleaded guilty at the start of the trial last month -- say 187 people, mostly foreign-paid Islamic "terrorists" aiming to overthrow President Islam Karimov, were killed in the eastern town on May 13. "They (rebel leaders) agreed already in 2004 that they would fight together against Uzbekistan's government, aiming to establish an Islamic caliphate," Uzbek Deputy Prosecutor General Anvar Nabiyev told the court. The United Nations last week cast doubt on the fairness of the trial and called for its expert to have access to the defendants and courtroom, saying that torture and mistreatment of detainees was common in the ex-Soviet Central Asian nation. Uzbekistan has rejected international calls for an independent inquiry into the killings, and human rights bodies have said that testimonies of guilt at the trial could have been obtained by torture or intimidation. Nabiyev asked for 20 years' jail for five defendants, 18 years for three, 17 years for four, and separate 15-, 16- and nine-year terms for the remaining three. He said the defendants had been found guilty of more than 30 crimes, including terrorism, murder, hostage-taking, seizure of arms and an attempted coup d'etat. The accused had told the court that neighboring Kyrgyzstan provided its land for training rebels, while the U.S. embassy provided some funds and Western media instigated the uprising. One by one, witnesses gave similar accounts of the rebels shooting civilians and killing hostages. Only one, an Andizhan housewife, later stunned the court later by saying that in fact government troops opened fire on people waving a white flag. Russia and China threw their weight behind Karimov and approved of the use of force in Andizhan, while the United States was given six months to leave a key Uzbek air base after it strongly criticized the killings.