A court in the northern Tajik city of Khudzhand has sentenced ten Tajik citizens to long prison terms on charges of involvement in the activities of the Jamaat Ansarullah extremist organization, the Tajik Supreme Court's press service reported.
The convicts are aged between 30 and 38. All of them are residents of the Sogd Region with the administrative center of Khudzhand, the country's second largest city. They were detained in a special operation in January 2015.
The suspects were found guilty of organizing a criminal extremist group and participating in its activities, and of membership in a banned extremist organization. Each of the suspects was sentenced to eight years and six months in a high security prison.
It was a second trial of Jamaat Ansarullah members to have been held in Khudzhand since the start of the year. In February 13 suspected extremists were sentenced to nine to 12 years in a high security prison.
A Tajik special service leader said on February 5 that Pakistan's interagency intelligence service had handed over to Dushanbe six persons suspected of plotting terror attacks in Tajikistan, one of whom was a leader of Jamaat Ansarullah's Tajik wing.
Jamaat Ansarullah made itself known in Tajikistan in September 2010 after two policemen were killed and 20 others injured when a car laden with explosives rammed into the building of the Sogd regional department for combating organized crime in Khudzhand.
The Tajik authorities rate Jamaat Ansarullah as a wing of the Islamic Movement of Uzbekistan (IMU) active in the Ferghana valley which is shared by Uzbekistan, Tajikistan and Kyrgyzstan. Suspects in IMU membership are usually detained in the Sogd Region.
The IMU, which has links to Al Qaeda, wants to throw down all secular governments in Central Asia and form an Islamic state. It is banned as a terrorist organization in the United States, Russia and other countries.
