An unofficial source has reported that the brothers Abduvakhad and Kabylzhan Temirov, ethnic Uzbeks, have been sentenced to death for murder by the Supreme Court of Kazakhstan. They had been convicted of murdering two Kyrgyz women during an outbreak of violence between the Kyrgyz and Uzbek communities in Osh region in June 1990. They were tried in Kazakhstan, apparently on the orders of procuracy officials of the former USSR, who feared that to hold the trial in Kyrgyzstan would incite further ethnic conflict. A petition for clemency was rejected by the office of the Kazakh President in January 1991; the clemency commission of the USSR Supreme Soviet was disbanded before it could hear the petition. AI fears that the death sentence may be carried out imminently.
