"Terrorism attempts to intimidate the nation-and fighting one's own nation is like children making war on their parents. Will anyone justify such people?" he said after yesterday's session of a government commission investigating the July 30 tragedy. President Karimov chaired the session.
He expressed heartfelt condolence with the bereaved, and wished the injured to get well soon.
"The terror acts of yesterday logically continued crimes perpetrated in this country last spring," said Mr. Karimov as he referred to current Supreme Court hearings. The defendants are suspected of complicity in last spring's series of terror acts in Tashkent and the Bukhara Region.
"Some of these criminals were deluded and misled. They are our sons and daughters. Don't forget that!" said the President as he called to make educational work with young people less formal than it is.
Masterminding the Friday blasts was the Islamic Movement of Uzbekistan, assume certain media outlets. President Karimov denied the allegations. He thinks the track leads to the Hazb-al-Tahrir, or Islamic Liberation Party. This international extremist movement aims to incorporate many Muslim countries into what they name Caliphate of the True Believers. Caliphates were feudal theocracies led by a Caliph, potentate who combined secular and religious authority. The Ottoman Empire, and the Abbasid, Umayyad and Fatimid states were exemplary caliphates.
Islam Karimov came down on organizations out to whitewash the Hazb-al-Tahrir, and picture it as "a flock of innocent lambs".
"No one can provide whatever guarantees against Caliphate proponents appearing tomorrow, out to blast anyone and anything for the sake of their crazy idea," he warned.
Suicide terrorists blasted themselves in Tashkent Friday last, July 30, in front of the U.S. and Israeli embassies and the Prosecutor General's office. Two Uzbek nationals died on the spot close to the Israeli Embassy, and another soon died in hospital. No foreign diplomats received as much as a scratch.
The Supreme Court of Uzbekistan launched open-attendance hearings, last week, on a team suspected of masterminding and perpetrating a series of terror acts.
Several blasts in the Bukhara and Tashkent regions, and in Tashkent, killed a total 28 and injured roughly fifty late last March and early April. Sixteen terrorists died in skirmishes during attempted arrests, and another fifteen blasted themselves not to be taken alive.
There are fifteen in the dock, two girls among them. All are twenty to twenty-five years of age, the oldest coming on thirty. They have been indicted on 17 clauses of the Criminal Code-in particular, with terrorism, attempted violent overthrow of the constitutional regime, and religious extremism.
