HUDOBERDIEV’S SUPPORTERS ON TRIAL IN TAJIKISTAN.

The military board of the Supreme Court of Tajikistan has sentenced to death Sherali Mirzoev and Kosym Babaev, prominent allies of the rebel ex-Colonel Mahmud Hudoberdiev (Itar-Tass, June 21). The trio had led the 1997 antigovernment rebellion in the Khatlon region, whose indigenous leadership had fallen out with President Imomali Rahmonov’s own clan based in adjacent Kulob. The fighting extended westward into Uzbek-inhabited districts of Tajikistan, resulting in forty-nine killed and 141 wounded on both sides before Hudoberdiev retreated into neighboring Uzbekistan. The Supreme Court is about to initiate the first of several mass trials of participants in Hudoberdiev’s follow-up rebellion, that of November 1998 in the Leninobod region (Itar-Tass, June 20).

KAZAKHSTAN LIBERALIZES ELECTORAL LEGISLATION.