KHABAROVSK, September 15 (RAPSI) – A court in the Far Eastern city of Khabarovsk has sentenced three nationals of Tajikistan to imprisonment for recruiting other people to join the Islamic Party of Turkestan, which is prohibited in Russia, the regional prosecutor's office reported on Monday.

The court found that the defendants joined the Islamic Party of Turkestan between the fall of 2010 and March 2013. The party is financed by foreign Islamic centers that are working to create extremist religious organizations in Uzbekistan and other CIS countries. The party’s goal is to revive the Greater Islamic Caliphate in the Central Asian, Caucasus and Russia’s Volga republics. It maintains close ties with the Taliban movement and terrorist groups.

“The defendants arrived in Khabarovsk between March 2013 and January 2014. They settled in a nearby village and attempted to recruit Muslims into their terrorist organization,” the local prosecutor’s office said.

They also distributed videos about the organization’s fight in Afghanistan and Pakistan, which urged viewers to join the fight against these countries’ armies and also promoted the organization’s ideas.

“The court found the three defendants guilty of membership in a terrorist organization and sentenced one of them to four years and two months’ imprisonment and the other two to four years and three months’ imprisonment each, to be served in a general penal colony,” the prosecutor’s office said.

The defendants pleaded guilty, acknowledged their actions and asked the court to hear their case in a special (simplified) procedure, which is possible when a defendant pleads guilty. 

The Islamic Party of Turkestan, also known as the Islamic Movement of Uzbekistan or IMU, has been declared a terrorist organization by the Russian Supreme Court. Its operation is prohibited in many countries in Europe and Central Asia, as well as in the United States. Director of Russia’s Federal Security Service (FSB) Alexander Bortnikov believes that it is no less dangerous than al-Qaeda.