DUSHANBE, July 27, 2015, Asia-Plus — Interior Minister Ramazon Rahimzoda told reporters in Dushanbe on July 25 that OMON (special police unit) commander Gulmurod Halimov who has defected to the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL) militant group suffers from mental disease.
“Psychological test has shown that Halimov is mentally ill. He knew that he will be retired soon, and therefore, he decided to join the ISIL militants. I do not see another reason for his deed,” the minister said.
“Many accidental people got into the law enforcement agencies after the civil war, and I think that Halimov was one of them,” Rahimzoda said.
The minister believes that Halimov now repents of his deed and wants to return home and answer in law, because “he knows what is in store for him there.”
He further added that rumors that Halimov had allegedly taken several people with him to Syria had not been confirmed.
Halimov, 40, is wanted in Tajikistan for crimes that include high treason and illegal participation in military actions abroad.
We will recall that the special police unit commander Gulmurod Halimov who has been missing since late April reappeared on the Internet in May, claiming that he has joined ISIL militants in protest at official restrictions on religious observance back home.
In a video posted on YouTube on May 27, Colonel Gulmurod Halimov says that Tajik labor migrants “must stop serving infidels” in Russia and join ISIL in Syria and Iraq in order to establish Shari”a law in other countries, including Tajikistan.
Halimov’s defection to ISIL in May caused a media storm,
In his second ISIL video posted on YouTube on June 18, Halimov and other armed men sitting in front of a black IS-style flag try to dispel rumors that he has gone to Syria on a mission to kill a high-profile Tajik militant, Nusrat Nazarov. Nazarov, who goes by several other names, is a 39-year-old Tajik who has appeared in several IS videos claiming to be the leader of Tajik fighters in Raqqa. Nazarov was reportedly killed in Syria last month. Pointing to his gun, Halimov says he uses his weapon only to kill infidels: “If my own older brother or younger brother became an infidel, I would cut off his head. I would kill him if he fought against us.”
The third video showing wounded Halimov appeared on social networks on June 22. A certain user with Arabic name posted the video on Facebook. Halimov was reportedly wounded during a recent attack of Syrian government forces.
Halimov reportedly joined the Tajik police force in the early 1990s and was appointed the head of OMON in 2012. The father of eight children, he had attended counterterrorism courses in Russia and the United States.
Tajikistan”s official media sources have launched an “information war” against ISIL, pushing back against the group”s propaganda by publishing reports about its gory killings, enslavement of women, and other abuses. The “information war” is the latest in a series of tactics that Tajikistan has adopted in an attempt to combat recruitment to IS and avoid blowback from returning fighters, including declaring it a banned terror group and revoking the citizenship of Tajiks who fight abroad.
According to data of the Interior Ministry, 519 Tajiks are fighting alongside ISIL; 150 Tajik citizens have been killed in Syria and Iraq and 35 have returned home.
