DUSHANBE, June 24, 2016, Asia-Plus – A Tajik student has got a lengthy jail term for ties to the Jabhat al-Nusra terrorist group.
A court in Dushanbe’s Ismoili Somoni has sentenced the 22-year-old resident of Dushanbe, Abdullo Yusupov, to 14 years in prison.
The sentence followed his conviction on charges of mercenariness (Article 401 of Tajikistan’s Penal Code).
The court found him guilty of recruiting people to fight alongside terrorist groups in Syria.
A source at the Ismoili Somoni district court says Abdullo Yusupov was the third-year student of the Faculty of International Relations at Tajik National University when he became acquainted with certain Abu Dirar through the Odnoklassiniki social network in March 2015. Abdu Dirar reportedly recruited him to fight alongside extremist groups in Syria.
In June 2015, Abdullo Yusupov arrived in Aleppo through Turkey and got involved with the Jabhat al-Nusra extremist group. He was working as cameraman for the al-Qaeda affiliated group and participating in military training, the source said.
“When the Russian Air force began bombing ISIL and Jabhat al-Nusra positions in Syria, Abdullo Yusupov fled to Turkey and form there he arrived in Tajikistan. He was detained by law enforcement officers at the Dushanbe airport in February this year,” the source said.
Al-Nusra Front, or Jabhat al-Nusra, sometimes called al-Qaeda in Syria or al-Qaeda in the Levant, is a Sunni Islamist militia fighting against Syrian Government forces in the Syrian Civil War, with the aim of establishing an Islamist state in the country. It is the Syrian branch of al-Qaeda, and also operates in neighboring Lebanon.
The group announced its formation on January 23, 2012. In November 2012, the United States designated Jabhat al-Nusra as a foreign terrorist organization, followed by the United Nations Security Council and many other countries.
