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| Caucasus/Russia/Central Asia |
| Islamic party leader rejects Tajik claim he was behind deadly mutiny |
| 2015-09-19 |
| [RFE/RL] The exiled head of a recently banned Islamic political party in Tajikistan has rejected accusations that he ordered a deadly mutiny last week by a deputy defense minister. Muhiddin Kabiri, leader of the Islamic Renaissance Party of Tajikistan (IRPT), said, "I absolutely deny all the accusations, as neither I nor our party have anything to do with those developments." On September 17, the Tajik Prosecutor-General's Office said the deputy minister, Abduhalim Nazarzoda, who was killed in a special operation this week after authorities blamed him for attacks on a police station and weapons depot, was acting on orders from Kabiri and IRPT leadership. The prosecutors said the party's goal was to create a network of "20 criminal groups". The September 4 attacks occurred against the background of a new official ban on activities by the IRPT, which is among Tajikistan's largest and was for years the only registered Islamic political party in any of Central Asia's five post-Soviet republics. Kabiri said that Nazarzoda -- a former member of the United Tajik Opposition (UTO) that allied democratic, nationalist, and Islamist forces against government troops during the civil war in the 1990s -- had never been a party member and had nothing to do with the IRPT. The Prosecutor-General's Office also named 13 IRPT leaders and members it said were suspected of supporting party leader Kabiri's plot, saying that they had been arrested "to prevent more terrorist attacks in the country." Tajikistan's Justice Ministry last month banned the IRPT, claiming it lacked enough popular support to qualify as a registered party. The Tajik government blamed Nazarzoda and his fighters for attacks against a police station and an arsenal near Dushanbe that left 26 people dead, including nine police and 17 militants. Officials say Nazarzoda was killed along with ten of his supporters during a battle against security forces in the Romit Gorge area east of Dushanbe on September 16. IRPT leader Kabiri from his self-imposed exile reiterated pledges from party officials that the group would not go underground. But he warned that Tajikistan's radicalization is "inevitable" under such circumstances. |
| Posted by:ryuge |
| #1 Link fixed at 13:01 |
| Posted by: ryuge 2015-09-19 13:10 |