The Place of Dead Roads

Aljazeera reports Bereaved Uzbek mother gets prison:

A woman whose son was allegedly boiled to death in an Uzbek prison has herself been jailed on charges of religious extremism and plotting against the state.

The Thursday verdict was immediately condemned as politically motivated - an attempt to silence a woman who focused world attention on terrible human rights abuses in the central Asian republic.

Anti-War confirms in US Ally Uzbekistan Sends Elderly Mother to Prison, Hard Labor:

After torturing her son to death, allegedly by boiling him in water, the government of Washington's closest Central Asian ally, Uzbekistan, has sentenced his 62-year-old mother to six years of hard labor in prison, according to human rights groups, who are calling on the Bush administration to speak out against the continuing persecution of independent Muslims there.

The mother, Fatima Mukhadirova, was sentenced last week on charges of possessing unsanctioned religious literature, membership in a banned religion organization, and "attempted encroachment on the constitutional order" after a closed trial.

Markos Zúniga helps push the revelations arriving from across the Atlantic: British torture memos

With Tony Blair and Jack Straw cornered on extraordinary rendition, the UK government is particularly anxious to suppress all evidence of our complicity in obtaining intelligence extracted by foreign torturers.

The British Foreign Office is now seeking to block publication of Craig Murray's forthcoming book, which documents his time as Ambassador to Uzbekistan. The Foreign Office has demanded that Craig Murray remove all references to two especially damning British government documents, indicating that our government was knowingly receiving information extracted by the Uzbeks through torture, and return every copy that he has in his possession.

A sample of what is in the memos :

We receive intelligence obtained under torture from the Uzbek intelligence services, via the US. We should stop. It is bad information anyway. Tortured dupes are forced to sign up to confessions showing what the Uzbek government wants the US and UK to believe, that they and we are fighting the same war against terror...

We should cease all co-operation with the Uzbek Security Services they are beyond the pale. We indeed need to establish an SIS presence here, but not as in a friendly state.

From The Independent of UKEx-envoy to Uzbekistan goes public on torture:

Britain's former ambassador to Uzbekistan, Craig Murray, has defied the Foreign Office by publishing on the internet documents providing evidence that the British Government knowingly received information extracted by torture in the "war on terror".

Checking on http://www.craigmurray.co.uk/ gets the 403

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