Andijan: More Details

A report by Peter Boehm and Andrew Osborn in the Independent on Sunday gives some more details of the bloody crackdown by Usbek forces on protestors in Andijan on May 13:

Two key witnesses interviewed by this newspaper - an "insurgent" who played a key role in the "uprising" and a pro-government former policeman taken hostage by the insurgents - have filled in other gaps in horrifying detail. The crowds, it has been established, were mown down by powerful coaxial 7.62mm machine guns mounted on two Russian-built BTR-80 armoured personnel carriers. Such cannons can unleash 2,000 rounds barely pausing for breath before they need to be reloaded.

A military helicopter was used for reconnaissance purposes and Uzbek troops armed with Kalashnikov assault rifles opened fire on the demonstrators creating a deadly field of fire with the BTR-80s from which there was no escape. The soldiers made sure they had done their work well. After the shooting had finished they went from body to body delivering "control shots" to the back of people's heads and scoured the town's streets for survivors to finish off. Uzbekistan's President Islam Karimov contends that nobody gave the order to open fire.

In reality he was in command of the situation having flown to Andizhan from the capital Tashkent and almost certainly personally authorised the use of such deadly force. The "insurgents" themselves were not Islamist radicals as claimed by the authorities but largely devout Muslims following the teachings of a jailed former maths teacher called Akram Yuldashev.

But the report notes that

Far from being spontaneous, however, their "uprising" was meticulously planned and they too were not averse to murdering people. The IoS has learnt that they killed 54 men and women, most of them prison guards, when seizing a local prison to free its inmates.

We have also discovered that the insurgents encouraged the crowd to vent their fury on the 40 or so hostages they had captured - policemen, judges and soldiers. Hostages were beaten and received gunshot and stab wounds before being made to parade through Andizhan's streets, an event that immediately preceded what was to become the now notorious massacre.

The IoS has managed to piece together the most complete sequence of events assembled so far. The "uprising" began in the early hours of Friday morning when at around 12.30 a group of around 30 insurgents attacked a police station seizing weapons. An hour later they attacked a military garrison capturing more weapons and equipment - Kalashnikovs, Makarov pistols, hand grenades and even an army lorry.

Their next stop was the local prison where they released up to 2,000 inmates including 23 prominent local businessmen accused of Islamist extremism. The businessmen's trial was a key trigger for unrest. Sentence had yet to be passed but the insurgents, some of whom were friends or relatives, were sure they were going to be given stiff jail terms, which they considered unjust.

But at the prison the insurgents did their own killing, murdering guards many of whose weapons were actually unloaded, a government-ordered precaution to prevent them from falling into inmates' hands. Taking hostages along the way they then tried to seize three key local buildings, Andizhan's administrative headquarters, the local branch of the Interior Ministry and the office of the National Security Service. They succeeded in occupying the administrative headquarters but met armed resistance at the other two buildings and were repelled. When inside they phoned relatives telling them to join them and that was when crowds that would later swell to several thousand began to form in central Andizhan.