Rights activist confesses, is freed

An Uzbek court freed a rights activist and suspended her seven-year jail sentence after she confessed to all the charges against her and criticized international rights groups from a cage in the courtroom.

The United States had criticized the jail term handed down last week to Umida Niyazova, a translator for New York-based Human Rights Watch.

Niyazova, 32, who also wrote stories critical of the Uzbek government, was found guilty of smuggling subversive literature, illegally crossing the border and illegally financing local rights groups with funds from unnamed foreign embassies.