by Gulnoza Saidazimova
Tajik authorities announced on January 16, that 99 purported Hizb ut-Tahrir members were arrested last year. Many were sentenced to lengthy jail terms for "extremist activities." Experts say that despite crackdowns on Hizb ut-Tahrir by governments across the region, the number of the group's members and sympathizers has been on the rise in recent years.
It is hard to say how many members Hizb ut-Tahrir has in Central Asia. Some experts say there are thousands who share the group's main goal -- creating a caliphate, or an Islamic state. Hizb utTahrir's members say they are as many as tens of thousand.
In Tajikistan, 99 purported Hizb ut-Tahrir members, including 16 women, were arrested in 2005 alone. As the country's authorities announced on 16 January, 38 of them have already been sentenced to lengthy jail terms for "extremist activities."
Security Ministry official Abdulqader Mohamadiev alleged that two of those arrested were Hizb ut-Tahrir leaders.
"It has been established by the investigation that one of them is the deputy leader of this party's cell [in Tajikistan], and the prosecutor's office of the Soghd region [in northern Tajikistan] is investigating this case now," Mohamadiev said. "The other person, whose investigation is coming to an end, is a cell leader in the Soghd region. Both of them have been in detention and their cases are in the final stages."
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