13 Islamists convicted in Tajikistan
DUSHANBE. Feb 17 (Interfax) - A court in the city of Khujand in northern Tajikistan has sentenced 13 Tajik citizens to long prison terms for their membership in the extremist religious organization called Jamaat Ansarullah, or The Associates of Allah (JA), a spokesperson for the country's Supreme Court said on Tuesday.
The sentenced residents of the Sughd region, with its center in Khujand, the country's second largest city, are aged between 26 and 42. All of them were arrested during security operations in November 2014.
The accused were found guilty of "setting up and membership in a criminal community," and "organizing extremist activities, participating in the activities of any political party, public, religious or any other organization, which has been banned by a court for extremist activities," the spokesperson said.
Two of the convicts were sentenced to 12 years of in prison, the others to nine and ten. All of them will be serving their time at high-security prisons.
On February 5 a senior Tajik security officials said that Pakistan's Inter-Services Intelligence had extradited to Tajikistan six men suspected of plotting terror attacks in the republic, including one of the Tajik leaders of JA.
The group gained notoriety in Tajikistan in September 2010 when a Gaz-24 vehicle driven by a suicide bomber rammed into the office building of a regional organized-crime unit in Khujand. As a result, two police officers were killed and about 20 injured.
According to the Tajik authorities, JA is a wing of the Islamic Movement of Uzbekistan (IMU) operating in the Fergana Valley, an area shared by Uzbekistan, Tajikistan and Kyrgyzstan. It is in northern Tajikistan that IMU suspects normally get arrested.
In June 2014 a court in the Sughd region issued a guilty verdict against six Tajiks whom it found to be active JA members. The men were sentenced to nine years and nine and a half years of in prison.
IMU, which has links to Al-Qaeda, seeks to overthrow secular governments in Central Asia and turn them into Islamic states. Several countries, including Russia and the United States, have classified IMU as a terrorist organization.