Has a new member, Alisher Saipov. Saipov was shot dead outside his office. Of course, there is no evidence connecting the murder of this critic of the Uzbek regime and aforesaid repressive regime.

Why only the other week, the European Union was offering Uzbekistan a little carrot, to encourage it to repress a little more lightly [my italics below]:

With a view to encouraging the Uzbek authorities to take positive steps to improve the human rights situation and taking into account their commitments, the Council decided that the visa restrictions would not apply for a period of six months, at which point the Council will review if the Uzbek authorities have made progress towards meeting the conditions mentioned in paragraph 4 of these Conclusions. The Council may decide to apply the visa restrictions earlier if necessary, in light of the actions of the Uzbek authorities in the area of human rights.

We wouldn’t want to reimpose sanctions because some guy with a three month old daughter couldn’t keep his mouth shut – now would we?

And we don’t want to annoy our German friends who can see a side to the Uzbek regime that cynical types like Craig Murray seem quite unable to.

And just who would we like to see shot dead next, to keep the house warm and the heating bills down this winter?