A 21 year-old resident of the northern city of Isfara, Safroniddin Shomurodov, has got a jail term of fourteen years for propagating ideas of the Jamaat Ansarullah terrorist organization.
Ms. Mavjouda Raufi, the chairperson of the Khujand city court, says the sentenced followed his conviction on charges of participating in a criminal group, public calls for extremist activities, organization of n activity of an extremist organization and illegal involvement of Tajik citizens in armed groups and participation in foreign armed conflicts. Shomurodov will serve his term in a high-security penal colony,
According to her, Shomurodov was preparing “short-length films propagating the Jamaat Ansarullah ideas and posting them on the Internet.
Shomurodov reportedly joined Jamaat Ansarullah in September 2016 while he was in Novosibirsk (Russia) for seasonal work.
Recall, Jamaat Ansarullah, also known as the Society of Allah’s Soldiers, first came to light in September 2010 when the heretofore unknown organization claimed responsibility for a suicide attack on September 3 in Khujand, the capital of the Tajik northern Sughd province. An explosives-packed car rammed into the building of the Sughd regional organized crime control department, killing two officers and two civilians and wounding 28 people. The suicide bomber was local resident Akmal Karimov, who was reportedly trained in al-Qaeda camps in Afghanistan and Pakistan.
In September 2011, Jamaat Ansarullah issued several videos calling on Tajikistan’s citizens to embrace jihad against “infidels” and urging them to take action to support the implementation of Islamic Sharia law. “Those who pray namaz, who follow fasting rules but support democracy are nonbelievers,” a man on the video said. “Allah is killing nonbelievers by our hands and, thus, blesses us.” Some politicians and experts, however, doubt whether these videos can really be traced back to Jamaat Ansarullah.
In May 2012, Tajikistan’s Supreme Court officially banned Jamaat Ansarullah as extremist on the basis of a suit filed by the Prosecutor-General’s Office.
Jamaat Ansarullah is the only Tajik-founded terrorist organization. It reportedly emerged in Pakistan in the early 1990s and gradually moved to Afghanistan under commander Amriddin Tabarov. According to the Tajik law enforcement authorities, Tabarov, also known as Domullo Amriddin, was killed in Afghanistan in December 2015.
