Uzbekistan’s interim leader, Shavkat Mirziyoyev, has won a crushing presidential election victory to succeed the late Islam Karimov, official results show.  Mirziyoyev secured 88.6% of Sunday’s vote, according to a preliminary count, while western monitors reported signs of fraud.

• The election commission chairman, Mirza-Ulugbek Abdusalomov, said the official turnout was 87.83%, with more than 17.9 million voters casting ballots.

• Karimov, who became Uzbekistan’s Communist party chief in 1989 and ruled as president after the Soviet Union collapsed in 1991, tolerated little dissent and eliminated almost all political opposition within the nation of about 30 million.

Uzbekistan:

Uzbekistan officially the Republic of Uzbekistan, is a doubly landlocked country in Central Asia. It is a unitary, constitutional, presidential republic, comprising twelve provinces, one autonomous republic and a capital city.

Uzbekistan is bordered by five landlocked countries: Kazakhstan to the north; Tajikistan to the southeast; Kyrgyzstan to the northeast; Afghanistan to the south; and Turkmenistan to the southwest.

Capital: Tashkent