MOSCOW, February 12 (RAPSI) - A court in Russia's North Caucasus province of Dagestan sentenced a local resident to two years in prison for joining Hizb ut-Tahrir, an international terrorist organization banned in Russia, RIA Novosti reported on Thursday, citing Rasul Temirbekov, a spokesman for the Investigative Committee's branch in Dagestan.

Temirbekov said that the court found the evidence collected by law enforcement agencies sufficient to issue a verdict to Khabib Magomedov, a resident of Buynaksk. He was found guilty of joining an extremist organization and arms trafficking.

The investigation found that in 2009, Magomedov joined a Buynaksk branch of the Party of Islamic Liberation (Hizb ut-Tahrir). The group members called for people to participate in establishing an Islamic state. Moreover, Magomedov illegally purchased ammunition for various firearms from a local resident and stored it at his home.

Hizb ut-Tahrir is an international pan-Islamic political party founded in 1953 in Eastern Jerusalem. Russia officially declared its activity as terrorist in February 2003 by an order of the Supreme Court.

Hizb ut-Tahrir members are regularly arrested by the police across Russia, mainly in big cities in Central Russia, the Volga region and Siberia. Also, there are a lot of their supporters in Crimea, which rejoined Russia last spring.