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| Caucasus/Russia/Central Asia |
| Kazakh National Security Council exterminates terrorist group |
| 2006-04-22 |
| Arrests were made in early April, but Kazakh state security seems unsure even now gunmen of what international terrorist organization have been bagged. According to Sergei Minenkov, Chief of the International Terrorism Department of the National Security Committee, this is what they have courts for. Officers of Arystan (special forces of the National Security Committee) were arrested for involvement in abduction and murder of opposition leader Altynbek Sarsenbayev earlier this year. Ever since, Kazakh secret services have been regularly reporting their own successes in the war on crime and terrorism in the hope to at least repair the damage done to their repute. An arrest was made in Astana, the capital of Kazakhstan, the other day. Secret services detained a young man who kept "subversive literature" under his mattress at home. The detainee was immediately branded as an activist of the banned Hizb-ut-Takhrir, international structure active in Uzbekistan nearby. Elimination of a whole gang set up by a foreign terrorist organization was proclaimed at the briefing in Astana yesterday. Almost 120 officers of the National Security Committee and Interior Ministry were involved the operation labelled as "unprecedented". Searches at 18 locations and arrests were made in the course of the operation. Success is ascribed to interaction with foreign police forces and intelligence communities. "Some foreign terrorist organizations even now regard Kazakhstan as a place where they can recruit our citizens and train them at special camps and where they can establish their bases and structures," Minenkov said. Searches produced blueprints and some elements of explosive devices, plans of the future targets (crowded locations and objects of life-support infrastructure), weapons, munitions, "and a great deal of literature, audio- and videotapes promoting religious extremism." According to Minenkov, the arrestees had intended to overrun security structures (the police, financial police, and National Security Committee) and proclaim a caliphate on the territory of Kazakhstan. All ten arrestees are citizens of Kazakhstan, facing charges of organization of and participation in a gang, inflammation of religious hatred, and illegal possession of weapons and munitions. The National Security Committee is convinced that at least three of them were trained abroad (combat training and ideological indoctrination). Minenkov announced that four arrestees had already confessed. Twelve other people are involved as witnesses, prepared to testify before a court that the arrestees attempted to recruit them into the organization. Along with organization of terrorist acts, the gang had orders from its leaders abroad (these instructions were discovered in the course of the searches) to "compile information on the situation with ethnic relations in the republic and on activities of the opposition". Foreign ringleaders were also interested in the sociopolitical situation in Kazakhstan and its relations with neighboring states. "Proliferation of radical religious ideology in Kazakhstan was one of the gang's priorities," Minenkov said. So extensively informed of the arrestees' plans and intentions, the National Security Committee nevertheless failed to expose their contacts with any known international terrorist organization. "It's hard to say at this point what international terrorist organization they belong to," Minenkov admitted. "Let the court decide it." Kazakh secret services reported detention of the so called Zhamoat of Central Asian Mujaheddin last year. Vladimir Bozhko, the then Deputy Chairman of the National Security Committee, called it a structural division of Al-Qaeda. Arrests were made and extolled for a time - with nothing at all to show for it. Things quieted down. Russian media outlets regularly report existence of Chechen gunmen's camps in Kazakhstan but the National Security Committee has never bagged a single Chechen extremist. The Uzbek authorities announced in the wake of explosions in Tashkent last year that there was a shakhid training center in Southern Kazakhstan (the kamikaze in Tashkent were identified as citizens of Kazakhstan) but Kazakh secret services denounced the information. A major incident involving armed gunmen (just passing Kazakhstan en route somewhere else) took place in Alma-Ata several years ago. |
| Posted by:Dan Darling |