Extremists detained in Tajikistan

Members of the banned Uzbek Islamic Movement were arrested on Monday in the city of Khudzhand in northern Tajikistan.

"An Uzbek citizen, 37, and a Russian citizen from the Mordova region, 41, who are accused of being members of the Uzbek Islamic Movement, were detained on December 5 in Khudzhand," a source from the Tajik Interior Ministry told.

"Six other people from northern Tajikistan were also detained," the source said.

The men were detained while distributing leaflets calling for a coup d'etat. The town of Khudzhand is an administrative center in the Tajik Sughd region. It borders on Uzbekistan and is the second largest city in the country.

The Uzbek Islamic Movement is an extremist organization, which says it wants to establish an Islamic caliphate in the Central Asian countries.

Several dozen people suspected of links with the Uzbek Islamic Movement and Hizb-ut-Tahrir have been arrested in Tajikistan since the beginning of 2005, Interfax reports.

V.Y.