A court in Uzbekistan jailed six people on Monday in the latest in a wave of controversial trials over last year's suicide blasts and attacks against the US and Israeli embassies and other targets, a defence lawyer at the trial said. The defendants -- two women and four men, two of the latter being blind -- were jailed for between seven and 16 years for their alleged roles in the violence in March and April in locations across this former Soviet republic and in July against the two embassy buildings, the lawyer said.

The attacks on the embassies killed four Uzbek security guards while the other victims were police who were targeted in the attacks and suspects who blew themselves up or were killed by the police.

Well over 100 people have been jailed so far over the violence, which hard-line President Islam Karimov has said was co-ordinated from Kazakhstan and Pakistan.

Human rights groups have repeatedly criticised the standard of the trials, accusing the security forces of torturing defendants -- a practice that a UN rapporteur said in 2002 was systematic in Uzbekistan. Prosecutors in the latest trial said that key defendant Murod Latipov had recruited young men to train at terrorist camps in neighbouring Tajikistan.

Copyright Agence France-Presse, 2005