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Two Chechen students get 5 years in penal colony for attempt to join Syria militants

GROZNY, December 25. /TASS/. A district court in Chechnya’s capital Grozny has sentenced 19-year-old Shamil Vakhaev and 21-year-old Iles Tutaev to five years in a penal colony. They were found guilty of "preparing to take part in an illegal armed group on the territory of a foreign state," the prosecutor’s office said.

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"Investigators found out that student of the physics and mathematics department of the Chechen State Teachers Training University Vakhaev and graduate of the Grozny State College of Information Technology Tutaev made deliberate actions aimed at joining one of the illegal armed groups and taking part in the fighting in Syria," the report said.

According to the prosecutor’s office, in January the convicts began to socialize online with a representative of one of the groups fighting in Syria. As a result, the two young men became followers of religious extremism. On July 21 they left Grozny without the knowledge of their relatives and by agreement with the recruiter. They planned to get to Moscow, where they were going to make fake passports, fly to Turkey and then move to Syria’s territory. They were detained during search activities in Nevinnomyssk, a city in Russia’s southern Stavropol territory.

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