Uzbek extremists free prison inmates

An armed crowd freed inmates from a prison in an eastern Uzbekistan city as thousands of activists took to the streets today to protest the trial of 23 Islamic businessmen on extremism charges while security forces fired into the air, witnesses said.

Uzbek President Islam Karimov and other leaders were flying to the eastern city, Andijan, to assess the situation and state and regional administrative buildings there remained under government control, police and government spokesmen said on condition of anonymity.

“The people have risen,” said Valijon Atakhonjonov, the brother of one of defendants in the trial.

Atakhonjonov, reached by telephone from Tashkent, described chaos in the streets, with shots being fired into the air by security forces and thousands of people massing in front of the local administration building.

However, a government spokesman in Andijan, also reached by telephone, said city and regional administrative buildings remained under government control.

Armed demonstrators went to a prison to free inmates overnight, Atakhonjonov said, but he could not confirm reports that the crowd had attacked an army garrison as well.

The 23 defendants are charged with anti-constitutional activity and forming a criminal and extremist organisation, but rights activists say the case is part of a broad government crackdown on religious dissent. All of the defendants pleaded not guilty at their trial, which opened February 10.

Several thousand joined a protest on Wednesday, demanding that the 23 men be freed in one of the largest recent public shows of mounting anger over alleged rights abuses by the ex-Soviet republic’s government.

The men, arrested in June, are accused of being members of the Akramia religious group and having contacts with the outlawed radical Islamic party Hizb-ut-Tahrir.

Authorities accuse Hizb-ut-Tahrir of inspiring terror attacks in Uzbekistan last year that killed more than 50. The group, which claims to eschew violence, denied responsibility.

Akramia unites followers of jailed Uzbek Islamic dissident Akram Yuldashev, who was accused of calling for the overthrow of the predominantly Muslim country’s secular government – an accusation he denies.

The group’s members are considered the backbone of Andijan’s small business community, giving employment to thousands of people in the impoverished and densely populated Fergana Valley.