Ikrom Yakubov alleges that he is a former intelligence officer of Uzbekistan, in its National Security Service (SNB), who suggests that he defected to the United Kingdom in 2008.
[3][4] In 2008, he also alleged that the crash of Uzbekistan Airways Flight 1154 had been engineered by the Uzbek leadership, killing UN Resident Representative Richard Conroy.
[6] Radio Free Europe reported that a leading Uzbek human rights worker, Surat Ikramov, challenged Yakubov's account of himself.
[6] They reported Ikramov claimed that while Yakubov had worked for the Uzbek government, it was a low-level job, and not as a security official, and he learned no secrets there.
In 2017 Yakubov submitted a PhD thesis to the University of Dundee, entitled "The Role of Intelligence in Securitisation Processes: A Tool or An Agent.