Tajikistan jails 8 from outlawed Islamist group

DUSHANBE – Tajikistan has sentenced eight members of radical Islamist group Hizb ut-Tahrir to between six and 18 years in prison, accusing them of “anti-state activities,” a court official said on Saturday.
“Among the accused are both rank-and-file members as well as one of the local regional leaders who received an 18-year sentence,” a court official in the Central Asian country’s capital Dushanbe told AFP. They have been convicted of “organising and participating in a criminal organisation as well as instigating national, racial and religious animosity,” the official said.
The accused were arrested last autumn. Hizb ut-Tahrir is an extremist off-shoot of the Muslim Brotherhood and was founded in the 1950s in the Middle East. It appeared in Central Asia around 10 years ago and is considered one of the region’s most active fundamentalist Islamic organisations. The party’s goal in Central Asia, which was under Communist rule until the Soviet collapse in 1991, is the creation of a religious state throughout the region.
Tajikistan, a majority-Muslim country and the poorest state to emerge from the collapse of the Soviet Union, has in recent years been wracked by violence blamed on Islamist militants. Some 150 Hizb ut-Tahrir members were convicted in Tajikistan last year. Overall, Tajik authorities have convicted more than 500 of the group’s activists over the past decade.
Separately, Tajik police said they had managed early Saturday to avert the planned car bombing of regional police and security buildings in the city of Khujand in the country’s north. “Two makeshift bombs with timers have been defused,” a spokesman for the Tajik interior ministry told AFP.
The explosives had been placed in two cars parked near the buildings belonging to the regional police and regional security departments, the spokesman said. “They planned to blow up these two departments,” the official added.
Last September, two were killed and around 30 wounded during a suicide bombing at a police station in Khujand. Police linked the attack to the Islamic Movement of Uzbekistan (IMU), a militant group affiliated with Al-Qaeda.