DUSHANBE, October 16, Asia-Plus - The country’s law enforcement agencies have solved an attempt on lives of three Isfara officials that was committed on September 27, Mahmadsaid Juraqulov, the head of the Interior Ministry department to combat organized crime, remarked at news conference in Dushanbe today.  

According to him, five persons detained on suspicion of having been involved in this crime proved to be members of the Islamic Movement of Uzbekistan (IMU).  “Their names are not disclosed in the interest of the investigation,” Juraqulov said.  

Late on September 27, a group of gunmen attacked a car carrying Isfara Deputy Mayor Sodiq Rustamov, the director of the Isfara chemical plant, Nizom Jurayev, and the director of the Isfara tannery, Sodir Ubaidulloyev.  The incident took place on the 7 ^th kilometer of the road from Vorukh to Isfara, near the Dostuk Qarabagh village, a Kyrgyz enclave surrounded by the Isfara district, when the officials were returning from Vorukh, a Tajik enclave in Kyrgyz territory, in Jurayev’s Nissan.  The assailants fired at the Nissan from another car and escaped.  The officials were wounded and taken to the hospital.

Juraqulov added that 15 members of IMU have been annihilated in the territories of Tajikistan and Uzbekistan since the beginning of the year.  “At present there are 50-60 not active and 5-7 active members of the Islamic Movement of Uzbekistan in Tajikistan,” said Juraqulov, “Prosecutors have issued warrants on arrest of 23 of them and they are currently wanted by police.”  

Juraqulov also noted that the Islamic Movement of Uzbekistan had not been renamed the Islamic Movement of Turkestan.  “It is just an invention of Uzbekistan’s special service, who are spreading this allegation in order that name of Uzbekistan does not figure in the name of this organization,” the Tajik interior official said.  According to him, some 80 percent of the Islamic Movement of Uzbekistan are ethnic Uzbeks.