KHUJAND, April 20, 2016, Asia-Plus – A 28-year-old woman from the northern city of Guliston (formerly Qairoqqum), Ravshanoi Mirkhojayeva, who was poised to travel to Syria to fight with the group that became widely known as Islamic State (IS) has been jailed for 12 years.
Ms. Nargis Yodgorzoda, the chairperson of the Guliston court, says that Mirkhojayeva’s husband, Navrouzsho Gallabonov, was detained in Belarus in December 2014 and recently extradited to Tajikistan.
“In December 2014, Gallabonov was intending to travel from Belarus to Turkey but was detained by the Belarusian law enforcement authorities at the Minsk airport and extradited to Tajikistan,” said Yodgorzoda. “In February this year, a court in the city of Istiqlol (formerly Taboshar) found him guilty of an intention to travel to Syria to fight alongside IS militants and sentenced him to 14 years in prison.”
According to her, Ravshanoi Mirkhojayeva was going to travel from Dushanbe to Istanbul on December 19, 2014 but she gave her air ticket back after receiving SMS about the arrest of her husband in Minsk.
Sharif Rahmon, the chief of the Interior Ministry’s office in Sughd, told reporters in Khujand in January this year that 285 residents of Sughd have joined IS militants in Syria and 36 of them had been killed in fighting there.
