TASHKENT, Jan 18 (AFP) - The trial began Tuesday in Uzbekistan of six people accused of suicide attacks on the US and Israeli embassies here and a state prosecutor's office that left four dead, a court official said.
The official said two women and four men appeared at the central court in the capital Tashkent charged with the July 30 blasts which killed four Uzbek security guards at the embassies and the bombers.
They are accused of nearly 20 offences ranging from terrorism and religious extremism to organising a religious extremist group, the official told AFP.
Further details remained unclear as the trial got under way amid tight security.
But according to documents obtained by a human rights organisation, the Initiative Group of Independent Human Rights Defenders, the six are also charged with involvement in a series of blasts and shoot-outs with police that killed 47 people last March and April and in a string of blasts in 1999 that killed 16 people.
Two of the male defendants are blind, the group's chairman Surat Ikramov said.
More than 100 people have already been jailed in connection with the March and April, but Tuesday's trial was the first over the embassy blasts, which were more powerful and better organised, observers said.
Last year's attacks marked a major upsurge in violence in the former Soviet republic of 26 million people ruled by hardline President Islam Karimov.
Karimov has regularly blamed such violence on Islamists from neighbouring war-torn Afghanistan but has recently also pointed the finger at groups alleged to have operated from Kazakhstan, to the north.
Uzbekistan has been a key ally in Washington's anti-terrorism campaign in the region since 2001 and continues to provide US forces with a major airbase near the Afghan border.
01/18/2005 17:37 GMT - AFP