Murder of Jewish women in Tashkent not ethnic crime - police report

Interfax June 11 The murder of two Jewish women, a mother and her daughter, in Tashkent had nothing to do with their ethnicity, the city's police said in a preliminary report. A Tashkent police spokesman has confirmed the murder of Svetlana Loifer and her daughter Karina. The crime is being investigated based on charges of premeditated murder with aggravating circumstances, he said. It might have been a robbery attack because some of the women's belongings were stolen from the house, the spokesman said. Aziz Abidov, spokesman for the Uzbek government's committee for religious affairs, has criticized several media reports claiming that Jews have recently become the target of a series of attacks, but the republic's authorities are doing nothing to sort out the situation. "We are concerned that the situation is being politicized," Abidov told Interfax. "Uzbekistan is free from any forms of anti-Semitism. Our people have always been peace-loving and tolerant of other ethnic groups and religions. All Uzbek Jews live in harmony with all of the republic's other peoples," he said.