Kazakhs break al Qaeda-linked Islamist cell
REUTERS
Thursday 11 November, 2004
By Raushan Nurshayeva
ASTANA (Reuters) - Kazakhstan says it has broken up a network of Islamic
militants linked to al Qaeda who trained suicide bombers and planned a
"terrorist act" against a top official in neighbouring Uzbekistan.
Some members of the group, calling itself Jamaat of Central Asian
Mujahideen, participated in violent attacks on police and foreign
embassies in Uzbekistan which claimed more than 50 lives earlier this year, the
KNB security services said on Thursday.
"We must face up to the fact that terrorist organisations and people
with terrorist intentions are in Kazakhstan, living among us," Vladimir
Bozhko, deputy head of the KNB -- a successor to the Soviet KGB, told a news
conference.
"Religious terrorism is a real threat to all of us."
The KNB did not say exactly how many people it arrested, but said the
detained militants included nine Kazakhs and four Uzbeks. It also
detained four Kazakh women who had trained to be suicide bombers, Bozhko said.
The KNB had evidence proving that those arrested planned to kill a top
Uzbek official, he said but gave no details.
Kazakhstan, a vast oil-rich Central Asian state, stresses that its 15 million people -- a mix of Muslims, Orthodox Slavs and other religious confessions -- peacefully co-exist.
But Uzbekistan, which is much poorer and criticised in the West for
jailing young Muslim dissidents, has said militants used Kazakhstan as a
staging post for attacks on its soil.
U.S., BRITAIN, ISRAEL 'TARGETTED'
Bozhko said the illegal group had been set up by the Islamic Movement
of Uzbekistan, a group that targets the Uzbek government and has had links
to al Qaeda in Afghanistan, according to security analysts.
KNB operatives seized weapons, explosives, banned literature and
cassettes with speeches by Osama bin Laden, he said.
"Those arrested confessed that their future participation in acts of
terrorism and suicide attacks had been explained to them by the need to
fight the Uzbek authorities who allegedly oppress Muslims," the KNB
said in a statement.
"They also were told to fight 'enemies of Islam', including the United
States, Britain and Israel."
The U.S. State Department last week warned U.S. citizens of possible
terrorist attacks in Uzbekistan.
The Central Asian state has given Washington the use of a military
airbase to support its operations in Afghanistan and is treated as an ally in
the U.S. war on terror.
Uzbek President Islam Karimov says he is fighting extremists who want
to overthrow a secular government, but human rights groups and Western
diplomats say poverty and the mass jailing of dissident Muslims are
radicalising young men and women.
During two years in Kazakhstan Jamaat recruited 50 Uzbeks and up to 20
Kazakhs, Bozhko said. Some of them were trained in al Qaeda's camps
abroad, he said.
KNB officers ran a video cassette for journalists, featuring a modestly
dressed middle-aged woman. They said she was a mother of four who had
been trained as a suicide bomber.
"I address all Muslims and all the mujahideen still at large. Stop.
Because we, ordinary Muslims and ordinary people are the ones to suffer," she
said in Russian. "I am confident that there are still many deceived people
like me."
________________________________________________________________________________
News Bulletin of the Embassy of the Republic of Kazakhstan to the USA and Canada
(Compiled from own sources and agency reports)
Contact person: Roman Vassilenko
1401 16th Street NW, Washington DC 20036
Tel.: (202) 232- 5488 ext. 104, Fax: (202) 232- 5845
