DUSHANBE, February 12, 2016, Asia-Plus – Jamoliddin and Abdulfattoh, the sons of Mullah Amriddin, the leader of the Jamaat Ansarullah terrorist group, have preferred remaining in Bagram to repatriation to Tajikistan.
The Washington Post
reported on February 11 that “the cases of brothers Said Jamaluddin and Abdul Fatah and the Uzbek national, Musa Akhmadjanov, have been complicated by their refusal to be repatriated, out of fear they will be tortured.” Under international law, inmates cannot be sent back to countries where they may be abused.
Brig. Gen. Dawlat Waziri, a spokesman for the Afghan Defense Ministry, said the three men have reported being so fearful of their native countries that they prefer to remain in Bagram.
According to
The Washington Post
, attorneys for the men deny they want to stay in the prison, which has been linked to past acts of torture and ghastly unsanitary conditions. The attorneys say the best option is for them to be resettled in a third country.
“Jamaluddin and Fatah are the sons of Mullah Amruddin, a longtime political dissident and Islamic leader in Tajikistan,”
The Washington Post
reported
Fearing persecution, the brothers left home in the early 2000s to study in seminaries in Iran and later Afghanistan, Tina M. Foster, a lawyer with the International Justice Network, which works on detainee issues, was cited as saying.
In 2009, they were reportedly captured by U.S. forces during a raid on a suspected militant safe house in Afghanistan. For years, there was no public record of their detention.
Then about a year ago, Kate Clark, a researcher and director of the Afghan Analysts Network, uncovered U.S. case files containing allegations that the brothers had confessed to membership in the Islamic Movement of Turkestan, a Muslim separatist group.
However, neither U.S. nor Afghan prosecutors have ever charged the men with any terrorism-related crimes, Foster said.
Last February, an Afghan court convicted the brothers of entering Afghanistan without a valid visa, Foster said. They were sentenced to a maximum of three years in prison, but the judge ordered their release because they had already spent at least five years at Bagram. An appellate court and Afghanistan’s Supreme Court have upheld that ruling.
Meanwhile, Tajik Interior Minister Ramazon Rahimzoda told reporters in Dushanbe on January 25 that the leader of the Jamaat Ansarullah extremist group was killed in Afghanistan over half a year ago.
“Mullah Amriddin [real name Amriddin Tabarov] was killed in one of the operations in Afghanistan over half a year ago,” Rahimzoda told a news conference.
Amriddin Tabarov was born in the village of Samsolik, Nourobod district, some 100 kilometers east of Dushanbe in 1953.
During the country’s 1992-1997 civil war, Amriddin Tabarov was reportedly one of associates of the leader of the United Tajik Opposition (UTO), Said Abdullo Nuri. Tabarov did not accept the peace treaty and fled to Afghanistan, where he joined the Islamic Movement of Uzbekistan (IMU). Later, he reportedly left IMU and organized Jamaat Ansarullah.
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. 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.
