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Tajikistan’s prosecution agencies claim rebel general was financed from abroad — media

The rebel general, according to the prosecutor general’s office, had organized from 10 to 30 anti-government groups of up involving 300 people in all across the countr

© AP Photo/Emilio Morenatti

DUSHANBE, September 25. /TASS/. Tajikistan’s state television said on Friday that rebel general Abdukhalim Nazarzoda and his associates, reportedly eliminated in a recent security sweep in the mountains, were financed from abroad.

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The television cited the prosecutor general’s office as saying that Nazarzoda’s followers had been financed from abroad. Nazarzoda, according to the prosecutor general’s office, had organized from 10 to 30 anti-government groups of up involving 300 people in all across the country. Among members of these groups were top-ranking officers from the Tajik defence ministry.

On September 4, rebel General Abdukhalim Nazarzoda, Tajikistan’s former deputy defense minister, together with his supporters staged two attacks in the Tajik capital city Dushanbe and in Vakhdat, in the country’s west.

Nazarzoda seized a large amount of weapons and hid in the Ramit Gorge some 60 kilometres east of the capital city Dushanbe. On the following day, the prosecutor general’s office opened a criminal case on charges of terrorism, office abuse and other crimes. The anti-terrorist operation that was launched immediately after the attacks was over on September 16, with 139 gunmen detained and 28 killed. Fourteen law enforcers were killed.

Over the years of the civil war in Tajikistan in 1992-1995, Nazarzoda, dubbed Khalim, was a field commander of the Tajik armed opposition. After a peace deal was signed in June 1997, Nazarzoda was commissioned to the Tajik army under the programme of reintegration of former opposition gunmen. In 2014, he was promoted to the rank of Major General and appointed deputy defence minister. He was dismissed from the post by President Emomali Rakhmov on Friday, September 5, for "committing a crime.".

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