According to the preliminary investigation results, a lyceum guard was a casual victim of Sunday’s blast near the military prosecutor’s office in Qurghon Teppa, a source at the Prosecutor-General’s Office told Asia-Plus in an interview. 

According to him, the man picked up a suspect package on his way from a shop and was going to bring it to the nearest police station when the package blew up in his hands.  “Any other passerby could be in his place,” the source said.  

“The preliminary investigation has established that Hasanboi Rahmonov did not have any contacts with terrorist or criminal groups,” the source added.  

Recall, there were rumors in Qurghon Teppa that Hasanboi Rahmonov was an unfortunate bystander, who might just have been carrying a suspect package to the prosecutor’s office.  By way of a supporting argument, people point to the fact that his place of work, a technical lyceum, is right next door to the military prosecutor’s office.

According to the Interior Ministry’s website, a 67-year-old Hasanboi Rahmonov, an ethnic Uzbek, who worked as a guard at the technical lyceum next to the building of the Khatlon military prosecutor’s office, was killed as an explosive device detonated in his hands.  The incident took place on March 12 at about 9:30 pm.  

Meanwhile, the report by The Hague-based International Center for Counter-Terrorism (ICCT) -- War by Suicide: A Statistical Analysis of the Islamic State's Martyrdom Industry -- says that 27 Tajiks had carried out suicide operations in Iraq and Syria from December 2015 to November 2016, the highest among all foreign individuals whose country of origin had been identified.  

The report says 186 foreigners died as suicide operatives in the year in question and most came from Tajikistan, followed by Saudi Arabia, Morocco, Tunisia, and Russia.  Tajikistan’s presence at the top of this list is curious.  Over the twelve months in question, significantly more Tajiks died in VBIED (Vehicle Borne Improvised Explosive Devices) and inghimas operations in Syria and Iraq than any other foreign national, the report said, noting that the figure is even more striking when considered on a per capita basis, and suggests that Tajiks were being singled out for use in suicide attacks at least in part because of their nationality.  While a similar phenomenon appears to be the case with the other top-scoring states, the disproportionality of Tajikistan is strange indeed.  It is beyond the scope of this paper to determine why this might be, but it is worth noting that the man currently rumored to be IS’s highest military authority – Gulmurod Halimov – is a Tajik national, the report added.