Jamshid Muhtorov's children reciting the Koran.
Uznews.net has covered statements by exiled Uzbek human rights activist Tolib Yakubov that the information coming out about Muhtorov regarding his sister, jailed at age 19 on murder charges, is misleading. Tolib insists the sister was indeed guilty. He describes a spate of a half dozen grisly murders of private cab drivers at the time, who were killed with pistol shots, then thrown in the canal; some were dismembered. Then their cars were chopped up and sold off as parts Tolib says the sister was a “lure” for a gang that got taxi drivers to stop, then robbed and killed them
Jamshid’s sister, Dildora, a student at the Jizzakh teacher’s institute and secretary of the Jizzakh Criminal Court, was arrested with two young men. It’s that last detail – a college student with a part-time job in a court (?) that made me wonder if this was one of those gang/organized crime police fighter stories which abound in this region.
Naturally, one has to wonder why it was necessary to kill so many taxi drivers, when it was sufficient to rob them, and whether this was more complicated stories of gangland executions. Tolib, whose group was familiar with the case at the time, is convinced that the then-19-year-old sister was guilty, but he concedes that she was tortured and that the justice system is unfair and you can’t get due process. Even so, he thinks where there’s smoke there’s fire and the prosecution proved her guilt and her punishment was apt. She was sentenced to 17 years of prison. Things being what they are in Uzbekistan, the relatives of the cab drivers started coming to the Muhtorovs’ house and threatening them with reprisals. That’s why Jamshid Muhtorov wanted to leave for Kyrgyzstan.
Fergananews.com now has recently run a long piece on Muhtorov, half of which is a re-hash of Western press and what’s been on Radio Ozodlik already, and half of which is an interview with an Uzbek man in the US who says he knew him, that appears to be new material.
For some reason, fergananews.com never mentions in the re-telling of the story the pertinent piece of evidence proffered by the FBI that Muhtorov told his daughter "goodbye" and that he would "see her in heaven," before heading off with his one-way ticket to Turkey with not a lot of money, two phones and a GPS device.
Fergananews.com isn’t sure whether the man they’re interviewing, whom they call “Bakhtiyor,” is the same fellow who has come forward to the US authorities, but they think there is a possibility. He refused to allow his name to be published. “Despite his anonymity, we have every reason to believe him,” says fergananews.com
First, they address the legend of his human rights activity – over and over again, not only Registan and the more “progressive” sympathetic blogs looking for the terrorist’s unhappy childhood have called him a “human rights activist”; the mainstream mid-Western press in the US has called him this, too, as it is part of his background visible on the Internet.
But Bakhtiyor says, “Jamshid primarily defended not those without rights, but rich people. This was like deals with businessmen. I don’t think he was a real human rights activist, he never became one, having worked as head of the Jizzakh section of the Ezgulik human rights organizations for two years. Jamshid simply made use of the fact that the authorities after Andijan began to pressure the opposition. And that that his sister was tried supposedly on fabricated circumstances. But his sister really was in fact mixed up in serious murders. An incident was indicative of this. In around 2004, there were searches of the Muhtorovs’ home on suspicion of production of fake vodka, and these suspicions were not groundless; this is in fact what he was doing at home. How could such a person became a religious fanatic later?”
Bakhtiyor says that when later he was contacted by Jamshid in the States, he didn’t recognize him – he’d grown a beard, and had bruises on his forehead from prostrating himself in prayer. He said this was “the sign of a jihadist.”
“Great internal changes had taken place,” he said. He had changed his name to “Abu Mumin” and gave other names to his wife and children. The children began to recite the Koran. “I saw these children, and I felt very sorry for them,” said Bakhtiyor.
Yes, to be sure, just growing a beard or acquiring prayer bruises or getting your children to read the Koran doesn’t at all mean you could be turning into a terrorist. Bakhtiyor goes on to say, however, that Jamshid “kept repeating that he was ready to give his life for the ideas of Shariah, and called on me to follow his example and drop ‘all this nonsense – democracy.’”
He kept talking about overthrowing Karimov “in a few years we will take over the khukumat” [government].
The two argued, and then Jamshid came back and said that he had a “sheikh” in the US now – an Arab, not an Uzbek.
“These people, with whom he had come into contact helped him find work as a long-distance truck driver, and he could earn decent money. Jamshid bragged that he was sending part of his earnings to the birodar, i.e. to the brothers. But then last fall he said he planned to leave the States forever.”
(And here’s where I step in coming from a family with an OTR truck driver to tell you that long-distance truck-driving is grueling, and not a get-rich-quick scheme at all. You can make a fairly decent living, but it comes at the cost of long stretches away from home. Even if you put in very long hours – and you are limited by all kinds of regulations and inspections on how much you can do – it is not a field where you make fantastic sums especially in your first years. While increasingly you do find emigres from the post-Soviet countries, I’ve never heard of bands of fanatic Islamists using it as a recruiting tool – although it is a realm in which cigarette and other contraband-running, drugs, prostitution, etc. are part of the scene – although again, with plenty of police chasing it.)
Now here’s where the story gets weird – and unbelievable, as it has a strange claim that hasn’t been in any source. Asked why Jamshid wanted to leave, and whether he had “problems with the law,” Bakhtiyor says that “two days before Osama bin Ladn was killed, "police put a ankle bracelet on him and his 'brothers' which would locate them” – a picture is even provided at fergananews.com.
Really, guys? Bakhtiyor claims that Jamshid called bin Ladn “Our leader” and was very much afraid the Al Qaeda leader would be killed. This just seems outlandish, and for me, throws into question the whole piece. The FBI slaps ankle bracelets pre-emptively on Muslims two days before they kill bin Ladn? Please.
Fergananews.com asked Bakhtiyor if Jamshid hid his views, and Bakhtiyor says he didn’t, and even seemed fearless, given that a person who had chosen this path could expect to be monitored. “His brothers asked him not to say the name of Juma Namangani aloud and not talk on the telephone about their plans.”
So that’s why they had the code – “the wedding”. Was there a wedding? No, says Bakhtiyor, he was going to live and work in Turkey and let slip that he planned to meet his brother Hurshid there, who was supposed to visit him from Almaty (and that brother has now been arrested). And that he was supposed to introduce him to the “sheikhs” and the “birodar” there. Jamshid’s brother isn’t a jihadist, however; he’s secular, says Bakhtiyor, although Jamshid was trying to convert him, make him grow a beard, etc. but really he just wanted money.
The brother is now in danger of being deported back to Uzbekistan. He could have been arrested at the request of the US or Uzbekistan, says Bakhtiyor. There’s no evidence that a request came from the US. There’s one other brother, Asyl, who is estranged from him, and supposedly he tried to convert him, as well.
“Are you not surprised at the metamorphisis that occurred with Jamshid? First he was a pseudo-human rights activist, then he became a refugee, and then a jihadist?” asks fergananews.com
“Now, after his statements in court, nothing surprises me,” says Bakhtiyor. “For he renounced his ideas so easily which he had preached for several years. Real jihadists don’t act like that, they don’t renounce their ideas, they fight to the end and defend their idea.”
Fergananews.com says their interview raises more questions than it answers, and opens up the possibility – one that I also discussed in my past blogs – that in turning to jihad, Muhtorov was just finding one more hustle. Did Muhtorov deceive his sheikhs and birodars just like he is deceiving the investigation in court, they ask?
“Perhaps Jamshid has become a “bargaining chip” in a deal with Uzbekistan? We have to hope for a fair trial,” says fergananews.com and acknowledges that on that score, Jamshid is going to be faring much better than his brother Hurshid – a secular man who is now going to be sacrificed to Karimov’s war on any manifestation of “Islamism”.
Registan is still playing this as a “thought crime,” minimizing any aspect of terrorism and finding this entire store a fake-up in the “war on terrorism”. Sarah Kendzior finds the nicknames that Jamshid took to be suspicious – she just doesn’t think “a real Uzbek” would be using them, evidently, as she says:
I found no record of Abu Mumin Turkistony appearing anywhere online except in articles about the Muhtorov case, and the spelling is very strange for Uzbek. There is also no record of Muhtorov using Abu Mumin online, except for a Twitter account that connects to the [email protected] email address that the FBI claims is his: http://twitter.com/mjams3476. If you go to this Twitter account, you will see three messages, posted right before the FBI filed the affidavit. Why would Muhtorov open a Twitter account right before he’s going to flee the country for allegedly terrorist purposes, and post these particular messages?
Now that this source “Bakhtiyor” has come forward giving testimony that Jamshid used this name, that of course creates a problem for Sarah’s theory (although of course, we can’t validate Bakhtiyor’s testimony without his real name or knowing if he’s the state’s witness.) People start Twitter accounts and don’t do much with that – maybe they only need them to send one signal or just as a backup. It doesn’t mean anything one way or another. The spelling might be strange just because that’s how the FBI or the US press are spelling it. I don’t see why anyone would find it odd that someone would take a name with the word “Turkeston” in it in this part of the world.
