The President Shavkat Mirziyoyev, at a meeting with voters in Samarkand on September 24, said that some people tried to discredit him when he was the mayor of Tashkent’s Mirzo-Ulugbek district (1992-1996).

According to him, the incident occurred on the eve of the visit of the Iranian President to Tashkent. In October 1993, Ali Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani paid an official visit to Uzbekistan.

“I received an instruction. I was then a young mayor of the [Mirzo-Ulugbek] district. Then [the president] Islam Abduganievich [Karimov] said that with the [Iranian] president he would take part in the ceremony of laying flowers at the monument to Mirzo Ulugbek. Why am I telling you this? Many people strived to get rid of me,” he said.

In the morning, the two presidents were to visit the monument to Mirzo Ulugbek.

“At 6:50 am my assistant called from my office: 'Shavkat Miromonovich, the Ulugbek's head has been taken down and disappeared!' I say: 'Which head? Who is Ulugbek? ”In response:“ The head of the monument was blown off! ”Everything was planned so that at 9:50 a motorcade with the presidents would arrive, the monument would not have a head, thus, Mirziyoyev’s head would be also cut off (sacked). At 7:20 am I arrived at the site. The two leaders were due to arrive by 10:00 AM. Indeed, the monument had no head. The monument was made of plaster, with each monument kept in plaster form for a year or two to make it firm,” he said.

Shavkat Mirziyoyev said he understood who did it. “This can be done by only some senior officials, as this monument had been taken under protection the day before the presidents’ visit. Some organizations removed the head of the monument in order to get rid of Mirziyoyev,” the head of state said.

According to the president, then he recalled an article in the Vecherniy Tashkent newspaper, which said that "hooligans dug a house" at the foot of the Avicenna's monument near the surgery center.

“It remained in my memory. It was not only about the dismissal of Mirziyoyev, because the whole country would be disgraced. How do you imagine the presidents laying flowers to a headless monument. Then I remembered that that the monument [to Avicenna] was most likely made of plaster. Then he got into the car of his deputy and drove to his house himself, he lived in Chilanzar. I took a saw from him, and in the morning we cut off the head of Avicenna’s monument. I prayed that the head would not fall, since the body of Ulugbek's monument was larger. Then we made a scarf out of plaster in an hour and a half,” he said.

Shavkat Mirziyoyev noted that the first deputy head of the SNB arrived at 9:10 AM to "fire me for 100%."

“The city’s mayor came down and said:“ Listen, what have you done… where is Ulugbek's head?, he said, addressing to me, while not looking at the monument. When he turned around, he saw that the monument was standing. Both the monument and the head were there, ”the head of state said.

Addressing young people, the President noted that life is full of difficult struggles and urged them not to give up in the struggle.