On March 26, the Supreme Court sentenced Mizomuddin...

On March 26, the Supreme Court sentenced Mizomuddin Valiyev, Saidrakhmon Davuvoz and Yakub Darveshev to death by firing squad. They were convicted of murdering majors from Poland and Uruguay, a Japanese civil affairs officer and a Tajik interpreter, all members of the UN Mission of Observers in Tajikistan. The United Nations was in the impoverished, mountainous state to help monitor a cease-fire agreed between the ex-Soviet republic's official Islamic United Tajik Opposition (UTO) party and Moscow-backed secular government in 1997 after 5 years of bloody civil war. The 3 men, who all belong to the UTO, were captured after they had committed the murders. Slovak Jan Kubis, the UN Secretary General's special envoy for Tajikistan said the Secretary-General, Kofi Annan, asked the Tajik President not to carry out the executions because the UN was resolutely against the death penalty