TASHKENT: A court in Uzbekistan has sentenced two men to life in prison for raping and murdering 11 women in the Central Asian republic and neighbouring Kazakhstan, a prosecutor said on Wednesday.

Uzbek citizens Abduseit Ormanov and Polat Pardaliyev robbed, raped and then killed seven women in Uzbekistan and four women in neighbouring Kazakhstan between 2011 and 2012, prosecutor Azizbek Nazarov said.

In a lengthy article posted by the prosecutor's office on the judicial news website Huquq, Nazarov for the first time revealed the details of the sensational criminal case that shocked Tashkent two years ago.

The serial killings of women sent waves of horror across Uzbekistan, but no official information about the crimes was available until the publication of Nazarov's article — entitled “Death Machine”.

“An identical crime pattern was used in all cases: offering women taxi services using a Mercedes Benz 180-C car, the killers were taking them to deserted places, raping, strangling to death, and taking their money and valuables,” Nazarov wrote.

Investigators interviewed some 2,000 witnesses, checked over 500 owners of Mercedes Benz cars, and analysed data from 50,000 mobile phones, he wrote.

Nazarov didn't specify when the trial was held, but revealed that Pardaliyev has first been arrested and sentenced to a life term in Kazakhstan and then extradited to Uzbekistan.—AFP