Ex-Soviet Official Sentenced to Die in Bribery Case

A former senior Communist Party official in the Soviet republic of Uzbekistan has been sentenced to death by firing squad for corruption, the official news agency Tass said Wednesday.

Tass said that Abduvakhid Karimov, the former party first secretary of the Bukhara region in Uzbekistan, “abused his office by systematically taking large bribes from officials and by bribing a number of persons himself.”

The news agency said the death sentence was handed down by the Soviet Supreme Court in Moscow. It did not say when the execution would take place.

Tass said that a number of people who had bribed Karimov or received money from him had already been judged and that others were under investigation, but it gave no details.

Karimov, who was appointed in February, 1977, was removed as Bukhara regional party leader in January, 1984, expelled from the party and arrested. His arrest came less than three months after the death in office of Uzbek party chief Sharaf Rashidov, whose 24-year rule of the republic has come under sharp attack.

Since Mikhail S. Gorbachev became Kremlin leader in March, 1985, he has purged many party and government leaders in Uzbekistan in an anti-corruption campaign.