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Members of movement financed by Al Qaida standing trial in Tajikistan

The special operation in Nohiyai Rasht was held in July and August 2011

DUSHANBE, August 30 (Itar-Tass) — First trial over members of the extremist religious movement Jamoati Ansarulloh /the Society of Allah’s Soldiers/ has begun in Tajikistan.

Court hearings are held behind closed doors on the territory of a pretrial investigations center of the country’s State Committee for National Security, sources at the Tajikistani security services told Itar-Tass.

No details of court procedures have been released yet, but well-informed sources indicate that standing trial are fifteen citizens of Tajikistan charged with effectuating a number of terrorist acts and with organizing a criminal community.

Jamoati Ansarulloh was mentioned for the first time in 2010 when it was a little-known grouping. It was then that its members assumed responsibility for a terrorist act in Khujand, the administrative center of the northernmost region of Sughd.

A suicide bomber sitting in a car in front of the regional office of the Interior Ministry set off an explosive device then, killing three policemen and leaving thirty people with fragmentation wounds.

Tajikistani law enforcement agencies, however, refused to comment on the grouping’s statement in the wake of the explosion. They admitted the existence of Jamoati Ansarulloh only in 2011 after defeating “the terrorist underground quarters” in the Nohiyai Rasht district in the Pamir Mountains foothills.

The special operation in Nohiyai Rasht was held in July and August 2011.

In May 2012, the Prosecutor General’s Office added Jamoati Ansarulloh to the list of organizations engaged in religious extremism and terrorism and along with some other groupings, including Hezb ut-Tahreer, Salafiyyah, Jamoati Tablig, and the Islamic Movement of Uzbekistan.

According to the information provided by the Tajikistani security services, Jamoati Ansarulloh is the extremely radical wing of the latter movement and gets financing from Al Qaida.