The Sughd regional court has upheld the Spitamen district court’s verdict against two local residents convicted of membership in the outlawed Islamic Movement of Uzbekistan (IMU).
The Spitamen district court sentenced Abduvali Egamnazarov, 39, and Uktam Suyarov, 31, to 17 years in jail each last week. They were found guilty of being members of the Islamic Movement of Uzbekistan (IMU). They will serve their terms in a high-security penal colony.
The sentence followed their conviction on charges of organizing criminal group (Article 187 (2) of Tajikistan’s Penal Code) and organizing activity of an extremist group (Article 307 (3) of Tajikistan’s Penal Code.
Abduvali Egamnazarov reportedly joined the Islamic Movement of Uzbekistan in 2012 while being on seasonal work in Moscow. Egamnazarov recruited his fellow-villager Uktam Suyarov into the IMU.
“Last year, they sent 20,000 Russian rubles to Syria to strengthen positions of IM members fighting in Syria,” an official source at the Sughd regional court told Asia-Plus in an interview.
The Islamic Movement of Uzbekistan (IMU) is a militant Islamist group formed in 1998] by the Islamic ideologue Tahir Yuldashev, and former Soviet paratrooper Juma Namangani—both ethnic Uzbeks from the Fergana Valley. Its objective is to create an Islamic state under Sharia; however, in subsequent years, it reinvented itself as an ally of al-Qaeda and the Taliban. In mid-2015 its leadership publicly pledged allegiance to the Islamic State (IS) terror group and announced that the IMU was part of the group's regional branch.
The IMU launched a series of raids into southern Kyrgyzstan in 1999 and 2000. The IMU suffered heavy casualties in 2001–2002 during the American-led invasion of Afghanistan. Namangani was killed, while Yuldashev and many of the IMU's remaining fighters escaped with remnants of the Taliban to Waziristan, in the Federally Administered Tribal Areas of Pakistan. Since then, the IMU has focused on fighting Pakistani forces in the Tribal Areas, and NATO and Afghan forces in northern Afghanistan.
Tahir Yuldashev was killed in August 2009 in a US missile airstrike that occurred shortly after the death of Pakistan Taliban chief Baitullah Mehsud. On August 17, 2010, the IMU announced that Yuldashev's long-serving deputy, Abu Usman Adil, had been appointed the group's new leader. Adil was killed in an April 2012 US drone strike in Pakistan. In August 2012 the group announced that Adil's deputy, Usman Ghazi, was their new leader.
