DUSHANBE, October 22, 2010, – Sughd chief prosecutor Yusuf Rahmonov has denied report released by some media that Tajik authorities admitted existence of the extremist Jamaat Ansarullah group in Tajikistan as “unfounded.”
He says, “The report that I allegedly said that five members of the Jamaat Ansarullah were detained in Sughd on suspicion of having been involved in the suicide car bombing in Khujand does not correspondent to the facts.”
According to him, neither during the October 14 news agency nor after it he told reporters that. “All persons detained on suspicion of having been involved in the September 3 suicide bombing attack in Khujand are members of the Islamic Movement of Uzbekistan,” Rahmonov said.
To-date, more than ten IMU members have been detained in the province on suspicion of having committed a number of other serious crimes, the Sughd chief prosecutor added.
We will recall that a number of local and foreign media on October 14 cited the Sughd chief prosecutor Yusuf Rahmonov as saying that five members of Jamaat Ansarullah, which is radical wing of the IMU, have been detained in Sughd. It was also reported that members of that extremist group were suspected of having been involved in the suicide car bombing in Khujand that killed two police officers and injured 25 others.
As it had been reported earlier, unknown Islamist group that called itself Jamaat Ansarullah in Tajikistan, on September 9 claimed responsibility for the suicide car bombing in Khujand. In a statement on the unofficial Islamist website www.kavkazcenter.com, it said a single suicide bomber drove a car into the police station in Khujand on September 3 and blew himself up. Jamaat Ansarullah in Tajikistan said in the statement: “The operation was carried out in response to the killing and humiliation of our brothers and simple Muslims, which took place behind the walls of this place accursed by Allah.”
