Uzbek dissidents break into first daughter Gulnara Karimova's house: Report

GENEVA - Agence France-Presse

The dissidents have claimed that Uzbekistan's fallen first daughter 'confiscated' many of the items from the national museum in Tashkent.

Exiled Uzbek dissidents broke into the Geneva home of President Islam Karimov's eldest daughter last month, publishing images of items allegedly taken from the Uzbek national museum, according to a report Jan. 5.

The members of a dissident group called Uzdem Fund Suisse entered the abandoned but not quite empty luxury home of Uzbekistan's once all-powerful Gulnara Karimova on December 23, broadcasting images from within on Skype and tweeting about what they saw, Swiss weekly Le Matin de Dimanche reported.

Works of art, gold and silver trinkets, jewellery, and an 18th century jewel-encrusted Coran were among the items the group filmed in the villa overlooking Lake Geneva, which Gulnara purchased in 2009 for 18 million Swiss francs ($20 million).

Head of the group Sefer Bekcan, a 53-year-old Uzbek dissident who has been living in Switzerland for the past 15 years, compared the tour around the estate Gulnara to "visiting a museum, without a ticket."

According to Le Matin de Dimanche, the group claims Uzbekistan's fallen first daughter "confiscated" many of the items from the national museum in Tashkent.

Staff members join dissidents

Gulnara, who long managed to combine politics with a career as a pop star, fashion designer and head of charitable funds and who was seen as a possible successor to her 75-year-old father, has suffered a spectacular fall from power in recent months.

She had been serving as her country's ambassador to the United Nations in Geneva, but was removed from that position and stripped of her diplomatic immunity in July.

Bekcan did not reveal how he and the other dissidents got hold of the keys to Gulnara's house, but said several of her staff members had joined the dissident group, according to the report.

Another possibility, according to the report, was that Uzbekistan's Rustem Inoyatov security service, believed to be heading the campaign against her back home, and Gulnara's estranged younger sister Lola Karimova Tillayeva, who owns a house nearby, had helped the dissidents.

Geneva police meanwhile said they had informed the house owner they could not take action against the intruders unless an official complaint was filed. The dissidents were in the end forced to leave when a private security firm was called in, Le Matin de Dimanche reported.