WASHINGTON, July 28 (UPI) -- The trial in Uzbekistan of suspected Islamist militants that started this week has raised disparate questions -- about both human rights and the possible role of Kazakhstan's border regions as training grounds.
Uzbekistan's top prosecutor charges that militants responsible for five days of bombings in late March and early April were trained at camps in southern Kazakhstan, triggering a strong denial from Kazakh national-security officials.
A trial of 15 suspected militants began in Tashkent Tuesday. The
13 men and two women, ranging in age from 22 to 40 years of age, face accusations of terrorism, attempted violent overthrow of Uzbekistan's constitutional system, religious extremism and other crimes.
Doubts remain about the fairness or accuracy of the proceedings as Uzbek trials in the past have been criticized by human rights organizations.
Secretary of State Colin Powell sent a powerful message to Uzbekistan in mid-July: No more U.S. funding to the central government until progress is made on democratic reform and human rights. However, the United States still maintains its base -- considered strategically important -- in Khanabad in the eastern Uzbekistan, and considers Uzbek militants a threat.
The State Department decision on foreign aid came after months of allegations by human rights watchdog groups -- such as Human Rights Watch in New York and the Brussels-based International Crisis Group -- of prison torture and Uzbek police misconduct.
"I have seen no evidence of improvement of behavior of police handling people in custody, and we see no evidence that the Uzbek government is serious about holding law enforcement personnel accountable," Rachel Denber, a Human Rights spokeswoman, said at the time.
Many of those targeted by the Uzbek government have been human rights activists and religious Muslims -- including women -- who have not committed violent acts, but were practicing their religion outside state religious institutions, according to Human Rights Watch.
Increasing violence broke out as Islamist militants began a campaign against the government for its repression.
But the deeper question arising from the trial this week involves Uzebekistan's neighbor.
On Tuesday, Uzbek Deputy Prosecutor Murod Solihov told the court that the alleged terrorists trained at camps in Kazakhstan's border regions, and some traveled from there to Azerbaijan, Iran, and Pakistan's Waziristan Province to undergo instruction in bomb-making and weapons use.
According to Uzbek national security officials, training locations included Shymkent, the regional capital of Southern Kazakhstan province, and the villages of Byelye Vody and Mankent, which lie east of Shymkent, and in Taraz, a city in Zhambyl province.
Solihov's charges were leaked by Deputy Prosecutor Alisher Mukhamedov in an exclusive interview in Tashkent with this correspondent in late June.
Mukhamedov said then "primary training of the suspects was carried out in Kazakhstan." Mukhamedov said some members of the group traveled to an al-Qaida training camp in the mountains of North Waziristan as recently as early 2004, where, he says, "the main training" took place.
The name of the camp in North Waziristan is Miramshah, according to
Rustam Khassanov, an investigator for Uzbekistan's National Security
Service, in a separate interview.
The trial is expected to take several weeks. The official death toll in the late March-early April series of explosions and clashes with police was 47 dead, including 33 alleged terrorists, 10 policemen and four civilians.
A statement from the National Security Committee of Kazakhstan Tuesday said, "this assertion by the state prosecution of Uzbekistan does not correspond to reality."
According to the statement, Kazakh Interior Ministry officials cooperated with Uzbek National Security investigators after the suicide bombings in late March and early April, but that information provided by Uzbek police regarding training camps in Kazakhstan could not be confirmed.
"During checking on the information on the presence in the southern region of Kazakhstan of militant training 'camps' and (information) on direct participation of people (in Kazakhstan) in organizing and carrying out terrorist acts were not confirmed," said the committee.
However, Kazakhstan's chairman of the National Security Committee told this correspondent in Almaty on June 9 that some of the suspected Uzbek terrorists had relatives in Kazakhstan and some of them were migrant laborers there. "We are working with Uzbek authorities to find out who were their supporters in Kazakhstan. We are trying to find out if they have their roots in Kazakhstan," said Lt. Gen. Nartay Dutbayev.
"Persons linked to terrorism use our territory as a refuge; it's not a big flow of people, but since 1999, with the assistance of our partners in Uzbekistan, we have found evidence of the Islamic Movement of Uzbekistan in Kazakhstan," Dutbayev added. The Islamic Movement of Uzbekistan is a militant group that fought alongside the Taliban in Afghanistan in 2001 and has been blamed for car bombings that left 16 dead in Tashkent in 1999.
One former IMU militant interviewed said, "leadership was based in Almaty (the former capital of Kazakhstan)" while he was involved with the group from March 1998 to March 1999. Alijon Hakimov, 43, says that he was ordered to move with his wife and children from Andijan, Uzbekistan to a safe house in Almaty in December 1998 by Emir Kazirov, an IMU leader. "We would get instructions from Almaty where leadership was based," he said in June.
Hakimov said he abandoned the group voluntarily, returned to Uzbekistan, and applied for a government amnesty in April 1999.
Dutbayev said Kazakhstan arrested and prosecuted last year five members of the Islamic Party of East Turkestan, all of whom were allegedly linked to bombings in Osh, a large city in Kyrgyzstan. "We [also] are working with Russian special services to apprehend Chechen terrorists (in Kazakstan)," he added.
"Violence is a permanent threat in Kazakhstan. We know that al-Qaida is looking for places where they can attack American citizens, and in
Kazakhstan we have many such places," he said. "However, we have long-term working relationships with the CIA and the FBI, and it was the Americans who helped show that the five people arrested were traveling to and from Afghanistan and that they were being financed by al-Qaida," he said.
Douglas Burton is a contributor to The Washington Times and a former
editor of Insight on the News who interviewed officials in Kazakhstan and Uzbekistan in June.
