Granted amnesty by the Uzbek government, Uigun Saidov turned in his Kalashnikov and sat back down at his pottery wheel.
He was returning to his Central Asian hometown after years on the run because he was part of an al-Qaeda-linked terror organization that joined the fight against US-led forces in Afghanistan that toppled the Taliban regime.
PHOTO: AP
Despite the government amnesty, Saidov was unrepentant about the aims of his former comrades-in-arms -- hundreds of whom he said still are hiding in Afghanistan and Pakistan.
"The Islamic Movement of Uzbekistan is in opposition to the government and its aim is to create an Islamic state," Saidov told reporters. The man, who looks younger than his 33 years, said he still believed in that goal.
Uzbekistan was shaken last week by four days of attacks and explosions that officials say killed at least 47, including 33 alleged terrorists.
A top anti-terror official has said the attacks were linked to the Wahhabi sect of Islam believed to have inspired Osama bin Laden. In the past, Uzbek officials have used that label when talking about the IMU.
The IMU was blamed for an alleged failed assassination attempt on President Islam Karimov in 1999 in which at least 16 others were killed. The organization also has been linked to incursions and kidnappings throughout Central Asia.
In Tashkent, the capital, Uzbek Foreign Minister Sadyk Safayev told journalists Sunday that he believed "the backbone of the IMU" had been broken during the anti-terror operations in Afghanistan after the Sept. 11 attacks. But he said "there might be several remnants of the IMU here." He gave no details.
"As a coordinated, centralized structure, I don't see any serious threat," he said.
Authorities have kept Saidov and his family under strict surveillance since his December return. After learning of the amnesty offer, he turned himself in at the Uzbek consulate in Karachi, Pakistan, along with his wife and three young children.
Saidov's father looked on with distrust as his son spoke to a reporter at the gates of the family's old one-story house in the outskirts of Navoi, 500km south of Tashkent.
Wearing a black-and-green shirt and jogging pants, Saidov began to talk only after a thorough check of his visitors' identification documents.
He said he had been trained at an IMU camp in neighboring Tajikistan's Tavildara region -- a former stronghold of the Tajik Islamic opposition that fought the secular government in a mid-1990s civil war.
Later, he said he was flown to Afghanistan in a military helicopter belonging to Russian troops stationed in Tajikistan.
"Our leader Juma Namangani had good ties with Russian military," he says. "They supplied us with weapons, clothes and other things."
The US military has said Namangani was killed in Afghanistan in late 2001, but no evidence has been publicly shown. Saidov said he did not know whether Namangani was dead or alive.
He said, however, that he believed reports last month that Pakistani troops injured the IMU's other top leader, Tahir Yuldash, in the Waziristan area on the Afghan border.
"He is there," Saidov said, adding that some 500 IMU fighters were still on the loose in Afghanistan and Pakistan.
However, Saidov denied that the IMU was behind the recent Uzbek attacks.
"I don't know whose hand that was. It's somebody new," he said.
Nearby, another man recently given amnesty after 3 years in an Uzbek prison for allegedly being a Wahhabi also denied involvement of that religious sect.
Republican US lawmakers on Friday criticized US President Joe Biden’s administration after sanctioned Chinese telecoms equipment giant Huawei unveiled a laptop this week powered by an Intel artificial intelligence (AI) chip. The US placed Huawei on a trade restriction list in 2019 for contravening Iran sanctions, part of a broader effort to hobble Beijing’s technological advances. Placement on the list means the company’s suppliers have to seek a special, difficult-to-obtain license before shipping to it. One such license, issued by then-US president Donald Trump’s administration, has allowed Intel to ship central processors to Huawei for use in laptops since 2020. China hardliners
A top Vietnamese property tycoon was on Thursday sentenced to death in one of the biggest corruption cases in history, with an estimated US$27 billion in damages. A panel of three hand-picked jurors and two judges rejected all defense arguments by Truong My Lan, chair of major developer Van Thinh Phat, who was found guilty of swindling cash from Saigon Commercial Bank (SCB) over a decade. “The defendant’s actions ... eroded people’s trust in the leadership of the [Communist] Party and state,” read the verdict at the trial in Ho Chi Minh City. After the five-week trial, 85 others were also sentenced on
Conjoined twins Lori and George Schappell, who pursued separate careers, interests and relationships during lives that defied medical expectations, died this month in Pennsylvania, funeral home officials said. They were 62. The twins, listed by Guinness World Records as the oldest living conjoined twins, died on April 7 at the Hospital of the University of Pennsylvania, obituaries posted by Leibensperger Funeral Homes of Hamburg said. The cause of death was not detailed. “When we were born, the doctors didn’t think we’d make 30, but we proved them wrong,” Lori said in an interview when they turned 50, the Philadelphia Inquirer reported. The
RAMPAGE: A Palestinian man was left dead after dozens of Israeli settlers searching for a missing 14-year-old boy stormed a village in the Israeli-occupied West Bank US President Joe Biden on Friday said he expected Iran to attack Israel “sooner, rather than later” and warned Tehran not to proceed. Asked by reporters about his message to Iran, Biden simply said: “Don’t,” underscoring Washington’s commitment to defend Israel. “We are devoted to the defense of Israel. We will support Israel. We will help defend Israel and Iran will not succeed,” he said. Biden said he would not divulge secure information, but said his expectation was that an attack could come “sooner, rather than later.” Israel braced on Friday for an attack by Iran or its proxies as warnings grew of