Tajikistan handed down 17-year prison sentences on Saturday to two former Guantanamo Bay detainees convicted of fighting alongside Taliban forces in Afghanistan. Both men were detained by the US military in Afghanistan in 2001 and held in the Guantanamo military prison for five years before being returned to their home country to face charges of being mercenaries in a foreign country. A Supreme Court judge said the men had belonged to the Islamic Movement of Uzbekistan, a militant group active in Central Asia in the late 1990s. IMU guerrillas fought alongside Taliban forces in Afghanistan but the group was largely destroyed by the US-led military campaign there in 2001. "Tajik citizens Mukit Vokhidov and Rukhniddin Sharopov were found guilty of mercenary activity and illegally crossing state borders," presiding judge Musammir Urakov told reporters. He said the men would serve their sentences in a penal colony.
Tajikistan, a Muslim nation of 7 million in Central Asia, shares a 1,340 km (840 mile) border with Afghanistan. The ex-Soviet country remains flooded with weapons after a 1992-97 civil war between Islamist guerrillas and the secular government in which more than 100,000 people were killed. The foreign ministry says at least 10 Tajik citizens are being held in Guantanamo Bay, most of them detained by US troops in Afghanistan on suspicion of involvement with the Taliban or al-Qaeda. In the last five years, about 70 suspected members of the IMU have been arrested in Tajikistan. Most were put on trial and received sentences of between 15 and 25 years.