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Monday, September 15, 2008 |
SundayHerald: "Ikrom Yakubov, a former major in the National Security Service (SNB), accused the CIA of involvement in torture sessions in the central Asian republic in an exclusive interview with the Sunday Herald, during which he made a series of startling claims. These include claims that:
- Britain's Richard Conroy, the UN's co-ordinator in Uzbekistan, was assassinated on the orders of Islam Karimov, the president of Uzbekistan. Karimov has been described as one of the world's worst dictators and his rule, since 1991, has been characterised by allegations of torture (including claims that victims were boiled alive), media control, fake elections and brutality against human rights organisations and pro-democracy activists;
- a series of bomb attacks in the capital, Tashkent, in March 2004 were organised by the SNB in order to tighten Karimov's dictatorial rule and ramp up the threat from Islamic terror groups;
- Karimov ordered the notorious Andijan massacre in May 2005, when Uzbek security forces fired on protesters, killing anything up to 1500 people;
- Karimov's regime routinely framed innocent Muslims on charges of involvement in Islamist terror and invented bogus terror threats to maintain his grip on the country, and
- the CIA used a secret detention facility in Uzbekistan where suspects in the 'war on terror' were taken from around the world to be tortured by SNB interrogators."
Craig Murray, former UK ambassador in Uzbekistan, has more on this.
11:08:23 AM 
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Reuters: "Georgian President Mikheil Saakashvili had long planned a military strike to seize back the breakaway region of South Ossetia but executed it poorly, making it easy for Russia to retaliate, Saakashvili's former defence minister said.
Irakly Okruashvili, Georgia's leading political exile, said in a weekend interview in Paris that the United States was partly to blame for the war, having failed to check the ambitions of what he called a man with democratic failings.
Saakashvili's days as president were now numbered, he said.
The former defence minister's remarks are significant because Saakashvili has always maintained Russia started the war by invading his country. The Georgian president said he handed EU leaders last week 'very strong proof' that Moscow was to blame, though he did not give details.
But Okruashvili, a close Saakashvili ally who served as defence minister from 2004 to 2006, said he and the president worked together on military plans to invade South Ossetia and a second breakaway region on the Black Sea coast, Abkhazia.
'Abkhazia was our strategic priority, but we drew up military plans in 2005 for taking both Abkhazia and South Ossetia as well,' Okruashvili said.
'The original plans called for a two-pronged operation entering South Ossetia, taking Tskhinvali, the Roki Tunnel and Java,' he said, referring respectively to the regional capital, the main border crossing between Russia and the rebel region, and another key town.
'Saakashvili's offensive only aimed at taking Tskhinvali, because he thought the U.S. would block a Russian reaction through diplomatic channels.'
'But when the U.S. reaction turned out to be non-existent, Saakashvili then moved troops toward the Roki tunnel, only to be outmanoeuvred by the Russians,' he said.
Okruashvili said Washington was partly to blame for the war because it uncritically supported Saakashvili despite his growing authoritarianism.
'(Saakashvili) must be held accountable and resign. If he steps down, he shouldn't be prosecuted. But if he doesn't it will lead to criminal charges against him,' Okruashvili said."
11:01:11 AM
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