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| IMU member was Chechen-trained |
| 2004-02-17 |
| Uzbekistan’s supreme court on Monday sentenced to death a man it said was a Chechen-trained member of an Islamic group responsible for bloody raids on neighbouring Kyrgyzstan. "From May to August of 1997 he underwent special training in the Russian republic of Chechnya at military camps of the international terrorist Khattab," the spokesman said, referring to a Jordanian-born Chechen guerrilla leader with suspected links to al Qaeda who was killed in 2002. A Kyrgyz military court is due to pass judgment on Thursday on five Uzbek and Kyrgyz citizens accused of organising an IMU-sponsored explosion at a market in the Kyrgyz capital Bishkek in December 2002 that killed seven people. Russia’s FSB security service detained a leader of another banned group, Hizb ut-Tahrir, last Friday at Uzbekistan’s request, Itar-Tass news agency reported on Monday. Officials were not immediately available for comment on the Tass report. Hizb ut-Tahrir, which wants to set up a Islamic state in Central Asia, was named last week in the case of a 62-year-old Uzbek woman whose son was a member of the group. The woman, who accused prison guards of torturing her son to death, was sentenced to six years in jail on Thursday on what supporters said were trumped up charges that included fomenting racial hatred. |
| Posted by:Dan Darling |