DUSHANBE, April 15, 2015, Asia-Plus – The 24-year-old resident of the Shahritous district in the southern province of Khatlon Parviz Nabiyev last month returned from Turkey, where he had taken the 50-day jihadi training as a potential recruit for the Islamic State (IS) extremist group, and surrendered himself to the Tajik law enforcement authorities.
Radio Liberty reports Parviz Nabiyev told the Tajik law enforcement authorities about his radicalization, his decision to become a “jihadi,” and his journey to Turkey that ended with disillusionment.
Nabiyev says he was radicalized in Russia, where he had been working at a Moscow meat factory.
According to Tajik authorities, a majority of the estimated 300 Tajik citizens who have joined the IS group in Syria and Iraq were labor migrants radicalized and recruited in Russia.
“We got most of the information from the Internet,” Nabiyev says, but admits “there were people, including an Uzbek man” who would call on Central Asian migrants to go to “jihad in Syria.”
“They would explain how to get there and also bought our tickets from Moscow to Turkey,” he says.
“Totally brainwashed” by such calls and convinced they were “going to fight for the sake of Allah and become martyrs,” Nabiyev says he and four other Tajik men arrived in Turkey in September 2014.
As advised by their mentors back in Russia, the men went to a mosque called Imam Bukhari.
Nabiyev didn”t say who was running the mosque in Turkey”s Aydin region but said they confiscated the Tajik men”s passports.
Meanwhile, back home in Shahritous, Nabiyev”s parents informed security officials about their son”s journey to Turkey.
“Parviz would call us once or twice a month and said he was working and studying in Turkey, but we found it suspicious,” says his father, Nasriddin Nabiyev. “We would tell him to come home and explained to him that he has chosen a wrong path. We still don”t know what made him go there, who was behind it all. He wasn”t that type of person.”
Nabiyev and his friends spent nearly two months in the mosque mostly learning the Koran and attending lectures about jihad, “killing infidels, Jews, and Shi”as,” and “achieving martyrdom as a direct path to paradise,” Nabiyev says.
“Once we asked them about what exactly we were expected to do in [Syria],” said Nabiyev. “They told us that, ”Once you are there, you have to kill children without any compassion. You have to kill women. And if you become a martyr, your wives will have to marry other jihadis.” When we heard this, we realized what we have got ourselves into. And we changed our minds.”
Nabiyev said he and two others wanted to return home, but their journey back wasn”t straightforward, since they didn”t have passports or money.
According to Nabiyev”s version of events, he was arrested by Turkish police near the Syrian border and sent to Moscow after spending three months in Turkish custody.
Nabiyev says he doesn”t know about the fate of the others — also from Shahritous — who refused to go to Syria and were stranded in an area near the Syrian border.
After he returned to Tajikistan on March 15, Nabiyev was charged with “participating as a mercenary in a foreign military conflict,” a criminal offense that carries a maximum penalty of 20 years in prison.
However, a court in Shahritous cleared him and set him free.
Tajik authorities have repeatedly said that Tajik recruits of extremist groups who voluntarily return from foreign countries and surrender to authorities would be pardoned if they had no prior criminal convictions.
Local officials in Shahritous want Nabiyev to participate in and speak at meetings aimed at preventing young Tajiks from joining foreign extremist groups.
According to Shahritous officials, at least four men from the district have joined IS militants in Syria, and two of them were killed there.
