Reuters AlertNet Lite - Life in jail for Tajik ministry blast plotters

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Life in jail for Tajik ministry blast plotters

23 Apr 2007 15:10:07 GMT
Source: Reuters

DUSHANBE, April 23 (Reuters) - Tajikistan's Supreme Court sentenced two men to life in jail on Monday for organising two blasts outside a ministry building in 2005.

The explosions outside the Emergencies Ministry building in the capital of the Central Asian state in February and June 2005 injured about 10 people and killed one of the bombers.

Judge Nur Nurov said the motive for the previously unexplained attacks was an attempt to intimidate a former Emergencies Minister who had joined the government after fighting alongside the opposition during a 1992-97 civil war.

Another nine accused were found guilty of belonging to the same criminal gang as the organisers of the bombs and sentenced to between seven and 28 years in jail, the judge said. Two of the accused were citizens of Uzbekistan.

He declined to name any of those sentenced and denied that the bombings were the work of the Islamic Movement of Uzbekistan (IMU), an extremist group active in the region in the late 1990s.

"We can only say that the organisers of the explosions in Dushanbe were former IMU members, but at the time they committed the crime they were already not," Nurov said.

Tajikistan's civil war pitted Islamist and other groups against a secular government backed by Moscow.

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Last updated:Mon Apr 23 15:12:30 2007