Posted on May 4, 2017

Uzbekistan Says Uncovering Militants Daily Among Returning Migrants

Mukhammadsharif Mamatkulov, Reuters, May 2, 2017

Uzbekistan’s police routinely uncover militant Islamists among Uzbek migrants returning home and plan to expose those who remain abroad via social networks, Interior Minister Abdusalom Azizov said on Tuesday.

An Uzbek asylum seeker has been charged by a Swedish court over a deadly truck attack in Stockholm last month that put Uzbekistan.

{snip}

“I will not hide the fact that almost every day we uncover people … who have returned (from abroad) and start spreading the Wahhabi ideology here,” Azizov told reporters.

{snip}

Uzbekistan, which battled armed Islamists on its own soil in the 1990s, said last month it had tipped off a western nation before the Stockholm attack that Rakhmat Akilov, the suspected perpetrator, was an Islamic State recruit.

{snip}

Azizov added that his ministry planned to publish a wanted list of Uzbek militants on social networks to help draw them to the attention of potential foreign employers and landlords.

{snip}