MOSCOW, November 14. /TASS/. Russia’s Federal Security Service (the FSB) and the Interior Ministry have detained 69 members of an international extremist organization known as Tabligi Jamaat (outlawed in Russia by the Supreme Court on May 7, 2009), the FSB’s public relations center told TASS.

"The Federal Security Service and the Interior Ministry carried out a joint operation in the Moscow Region on November 14, 2017 to put an end to the unlawful activities by an underground cell of the international extremist organization Tabligi Jamaat," the FSB said.

The cell was run by Central Asia-born ringleaders. Some Russian citizens were involved in its activity. The organization’s members had been taking various precautions and measures to counter law enforcement agencies.

"A total of 69 members of the extremist organization, including its leaders, were detained. In addition, searches were carried out and means of communication, extremist literature and electronic devices containing reports of the group’s unlawful activities were confiscated," the FSB said.

The Investigative Committee has opened a criminal case.

Last December, the FSB said seven members of a Tabligi Jamaat cell run by foreign emissaries were detained in Moscow. Its members had been brainwashing and recruiting new members in Moscow and the capital’s surrounding suburbs. Other members of the same group were earlier detained in Kazan and Crimea.