The contradictions between radical and moderate Islamic adherers are growing in Tatarstan, the Vedomosti daily reported. The responsibility for the attack on the religious leaders was assumed by the group Mujahidins of Tatarstan. The number of supporters of radical ideas is on the rise.
On Monday, the Tatar investigation department of the Russian Investigation Committee reported that a video was included in the criminal materials of the criminal case over the attempt on the life of the Tatar mufti and the murder of the deputy mufti. The video showed a man in the military uniform, who called himself as “an amir of Mujahidins of Tatarstan” and assumed responsibility for the terrorist act on July 19. The man was filmed in the forest at the background of the black flag with the Arabic inscription. He was identified as Rais Mingaleyev, 36.
This is already the second video, which the so-called Mujahidins of Tatarstan posted in the Internet.
Armed radical groups are rampaging in Tatarstan, Interior Minister Artyom Khokhorin said at an extraordinary meeting of the State Council on August 3, “the undeclared war” continues in the republic for 13 years, “this is not separate banned organizations, but real jamaats, and with quite many members,” the terrorists “have the skills of conspiracy and well organized.”
Head of the Volga centre of regional and ethnic religious studies of the Russian Institute of Strategic Studies Rais Suleimanov, who is cited by the newspaper, is aware about Mingaleyev. He is “a resident of Chistopole and lives now in the forest of the Trans-Kama region in Tatarstan.” A military training camp, which is provided with foodstuffs and weapons, was really deployed in the forests in southern Tatarstan, an expert said without disclosing his information sources. According to him, the Wahhabite underground has connections with the street groups, which staged recent rallies. “I do not find the Mujahidin videos as a provocative act and do not rule out that “the forest criminal community” can act in Tatarstan. There were and are conditions for the appearance of the supporters of the Islamic radical movements,” Kazan sociologist Sergei Sergeyev believes.
According to an officer of the security services, it is quite probable that the video was filmed not in Tatarstan. It is a major exaggeration to speak about the existence of the armed underground similar to that in the North Caucasus, but the situation is getting worse, the number of the protagonists of radical ideas is growing. A small, but real trafficking of radicals in the camps in Afghanistan, Pakistan and the North Caucasus for the training, particularly to the combat skills, has existed for the whole period of the 2000s.