FACTBOX - Uzbek militant leader killed in Pakistan
ISLAMABAD (Reuters) - An al Qaeda-linked Uzbek militant leader, Tahir Yuldashev, was killed in Pakistan in a U.S. drone missile strike in August, Pakistani intelligence agency officials said on Friday.
Yuldashev, leader of the Islamic Movement of Uzbekistan (IMU), was killed on Aug. 27 in South Waziristan on the Afghan border, where he had been based for some years, they said.
Here are some fact about Yuldashev:
* Yuldashev first emerged in the late 1980s as the founder of the Adolat, or Justice, movement, a gang of young Muslim vigilantes meting out mediaeval punishment in Uzbekistan's breathtakingly beautiful Ferghana Valley during the Soviet Union's final days.
* Thieves and prostitutes would be seated on donkeys, face to tail, and paraded around town, others beaten with sticks or tied to poles for passersby to spit in their faces.
* Precursors to the Taliban, Adolat youths wearing green armbands would drag off any woman daring to wear a short skirt and shave her head.
* Yuldashev's denouncements of post-Communist President Islam Karimov made him a wanted man, and he left to join like-minded Muslim militants fighting Tajikistan's civil war in the 1990s.
* He later helped found the IMU, a motley crew including Kyrgyz, Tajiks and even some Uighurs from China's restive Xinjiang province. Continued...
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