TASHKENT (AFP)---A court in Uzbekistan has sentenced three men to between 17 and 19 years imprisonment for the killing of leading Jewish theatre director Mark Weil in 2007, a head of a rights group said Wednesday.   

"Yakub Gafurov, 37, was sentenced to 19 years in jail, while Kahramon Pulatov and Alisher Sattorov, both aged 30, were sentenced to 17 years each by Mirabad disrtict court in Tashkent," Marat Zakhidov, a head of the committee to protect the rights of persons, told AFP.   

Another man, believed to be the main organiser of the crime, is still wanted by police, according to Zakhidov, whose group has been monitoring the trial that started in January as most of the sessions have been closed.   

The jail terms of the two defendants, Pulatov and Sattorov, will be cut by a quarter under an amnesty, according to the court's decision, Zakhidov said.
   

Mark Weil, founder and director of Uzbekistan's only private theatre Ilkhom and from a prominent Tashkent Jewish family, was stabbed to death in September 2007 near his home in the capital.   

Weil, 55 at the time of his murder, caused controversy with his experimental productions that treated subjects sensitive to Uzbek society.   

His "Imitations of The Koran", a performance based on the poem of the same title by Russian poet Alexander Pushkin, had earned him accusations of insulting religious feelings and the prophet, according to Zakhidov.

"However, the defendants said they were angered not by the content, but by the way how it was staged with half-naked actors," said Zakhidov, who has seen the court materials.   

According to court evidence, the men said they initially planned to "give him a good lesson for following an incorrect way of life" and claimed the murder was accidental.   

Weil founded the theatre in 1976, when Uzbekistan was part of the Soviet Union, and he was well known among the country's Russian-speaking intellectual elite and the expatriate community.   

An Uzbek citizen, he had a permit to work in the United States, where his family lived. His ashes were transported to the United States three years ago after a funeral service and cremation in Moscow.