October 23, 2015

October 26, 2009

More

Six years ago, on October 26, 2009, Ukraine’s Internal Affairs Minister Yurii Lutsenko announced the arrest of three members of a radical Islam group. The group was accused of planning to kill Crimean Tatar leader Mustafa Dzhemilev.

Mr. Dzhemilev, who has been critical of radical Islam, told RFE/RL that he believed that the Russian Federal Security Service (FSB) was behind the operation. “Some states who are not interested in allowing democratization in Ukraine” might be sponsoring the extremist Islamic organizations, Mr. Dzhemilev added.

The special operation led by Ukraine on October 23 revealed the plans of an extremist group Al-Takfir wal-Hijra to murder Mr. Dzhemilev. The operation, Mr. Lutsenko said, took place in several Crimean districts and confiscated a significant amount of explosives, extremist literature and manuals for using firearms.  The pamphlets also linked the men to Hizb ut-Tahrir, a group that wants to establish a global Islamic caliphate and is well-known in Central Asia.

Mr. Dzhemilev said that radical Islamists have noting in common with Islam and should be called extremists.

Crimean police chief Gennady Moskal, who downplayed the “Russian trace” in the assassination plot, reported that an estimated 100 members of extremist organizations were active in Crimea and that security forces were searching for Al-Takfir wal-Hijra’s leader.

In 2013 Russian security forces detained 15 members of the radical Islam group Al-Takfir wal-Hijra that was affiliated with the Muslim Brotherhood. The group was accused of planning an attack on Moscow.

Source: “Ukraine says Islamists planned to kill Crimean Tatar leader,” (RFE/RL), The Ukrainian Weekly, November 1, 2009.

Comments are closed.