DUSHANBE, July 17, Asia-Plus — 42 members of the outlawed religious extremist “Hizb ut-Tahrir” organization and the Islamic Movement of Uzbekistan (IMU) have been detained in Tajikistan since the beginning of this year. Tajik Minister of Interiors, Khumdin Sharipov, announced at a news conference in Dushanbe today.
The minister remarked that some half of them are women, who were joining those organizations for promises of financial benefits.
Many computers with the texts of the leaflets stored on them, video and audio cassettes with subversive materials and copying machines are usually found in houses of the detained activists of these organizations, which is evidence of a high level of propagation of the religious extremist ideas among the population, Khumdin Sharipov stressed.
Tohir Normatov, the head of the Interior Ministry chief staff, speaking to journalists noted that supporters of those organizations had been involved in many grave crimes committed in the country. He reminded that the IMU militants had been involved in the last year’s blasts in Dushanbe as well as attacks on outposts on both sides of the Tajik-Kyrgyz border in may this year.
ABOUT:
The IMU made up of militant Islamist extremists mostly from Uzbekistan was founded in August 1999. The group originally focused on overthrowing the government of Uzbek President Islam Karimov and replacing it with an Islamic state in Uzbekistan. When changing its name to the Islamic Party of Turkestan in June 2001, the group expanded its original goal of establishing an Islamic state in Uzbekistan to the creation of an Islamic state in all of Central Asia. The group shares many common goals with Hizb ut-Tahrir, an underground Islamist party active in Central Asia.
The Hizb ut-Tahrir organization has its origins in the Palestinian territories and what is now Jordan. Educated Palestinian refugees founded the movement in the early 1950s. The group”s activities in Central Asia were first noted in the mid-1990s. The group advocates the creation of an Islamic state that would extend over all the lands where Muslims have traditionally lived. In Tajikistan, the authorities charge the group with trying to overthrow the constitutional government of the country, but have never tried any members of charges of terrorism.
