Not surprisingly, terrorism suspect Jamshid Muhtorov, an Uzbek refugee and former human rights activist, is pleading not guilty to charges that he sought to aid the terrorist group Islamic Jihad Union.
He's asked for a lawyer and asked not to be treated as terrorism suspect, i.e. not to be held in special correctional facilities but with the general prison population. He said he has not been allowed to see his wife or an attorney (the state will provide one for him).
"I have been held as a terrorist," Muhtorov said during the hearing. "But I swear to Allah I have never done anything."
Surely he should get his day in court like all suspects in crimes, with all due process. The FBI believes that he contacted the Islamic Jihad Union in Turkey and planned to travel there to assist them in some kind of terrorist attack. The hypothesis was strengthened by his telling his young daughter that he would not see her again, but would see her in heaven.
That seems like the sort of thing you'd tell someone if you were planning to die in a suicide bombing attack, but was that the case? It's hard to think of any other hypothesis. Is it possible his daughter said something like, "But what if you die in a plane crash?" And he said, "Don't worry then we'd see each other in heaven." But...that's not what the FBI claims to have in a phone transcript.
The skepticism about his case from Registan.net and others largely hinges on the notion that the Islamic Jihad Union "doesn't exist." Defying the best efforts of the think-tanking security bloggers, the IJU nevertheless insists that it does exist and just released a video.
The Long War Journal has this to say:
The video, titled "The Path to Paradise, Part 6," was released to jihadist websites in early December 2011 by Badr al-Tawhid, "the media arm of the Islamic Jihad Union," according to the SITE Intelligence Group, which translated the video.
"The first part of the video shows new fighters receiving training in firearms, explosives, and heavy weapons at an IJU camp in 2009-2010, while the second shows the fighters applying this training to clashes and strikes against NATO-led ISAF forces and Afghan soldiers in Khost, Kunduz, and Paktia provinces," a summary provided by SITE stated.
BTW, they make it awfully hard to get a peek at these jihad videos -- you have to give your name, telephone number, and purpose.
There follows an awful lot of detail about this group and their fighting and their whereabouts, and yet Registan may not find it compelling -- I'd have to go research whether they find this particular blog or writer somehow "suspect" -- they often make judgements like this based on mere association.
I can't imagine where this blogger would get so much detail if this terrorist group didn't exist, but I have no independent knowledge about anything to do with the IJU. This video can be viewed here on the MEMRI site, which says "A new video from the Waziristan-based Uzbek "Islamic Jihad Union" contains footage from an IJU madrasa in which young children are shown undergoing military training."
Resettlement Watch, a group that seems terribly preoccupied with the idea that refugees coming to this country could harbour terrorists, has weighed in with great suspicion about Muhtorov. I've posted a comment that I think that isn't a fair assessment of the majority of Uzbek refugees -- I was going to follow up, but trying to log on to a WordPress blog -- as always! -- is just as hard as viewing those jihad videos at SITE -- I give up.
Another commenter asks why there was a special airlift of refugees. But Muhtorov wasn't "airlifted" -- he wasn't even involved in Andijan and isn't an "Andijan refugee" although he is a recognized refugee for the generic reasons anyone would be fleeing Uzbekistan and facing "a well-founded fear of persecution" if he were to return. Muhtorov happened to flee to Kyrgyzstan at about the same time as the Andijan events, and there he spent some months being processed by the UN High Commissioner for Refugees and was then eventually resettled in the US. Not exactly an "airlift".
Now why were the people really fleeing Andijan rescued quickly as a group? I can think of a number of reasons:
o the US decided to condemn the massacre and was then given an eviction notice, and they decided to save the people they could while they could
o those people may have given valuable human rights testimony that helped document the facts of the massacre
o I've also heard -- and have no way of confirming -- that some of the Andijan refugees were businessmen who actually helped the US with logistics or even intelligence in their efforts to use Uzbekistan as a route to Afghanistan.
Maybe? I have to wonder how useful such persons really could be. It may have been just a useful precaution of building up contacts among "the opposition" -- the active people who might take over after Karimov passes on. I don't know. We have to realize that our country has a proud tradition of taking in persecuted refugees and also has a proud tradition of taking in defectors from countries where they sometimes have useful intelligence, and both are in the same stream. It's not like the US deliberately seeds terrorists into immigrant flows. There's also the question of whether Muhtorov "radicalized" once on US soil. There isn't enough information to tell. He came from provincial Uzbekistan where many people are devout Muslims to start with, although he was not known for religious garb and beard while in Uzbekistan.
Meanwhile, the Russians are concerned that Central Asians aren't quite up to snuff to fight terrorism, and just as they are constantly pressuring Tajikistan over its porous and dangerous border with Afghanistan (no angels they), so they are now pressuring Kyrgyzstan.
Dierdre Tynan of EurasiaNet has the story. Paul Quinn-Judge of the International Crisis Group said:
“It is not clear how much of a threat will emanate from Afghanistan. Will this free up Central Asia Islamists to return to Central Asia, for example? Do they have the capacity to challenge security in a country like Uzbekistan? These sorts of questions are completely open. No-one seems to have enough reliable information to make a plausible case either way."
Moscow’s gift of military hardware to Bishkek makes it clear that Russian leaders are worried about the ability of Central Asian states to address regional security threats. Speaking at a hand-over ceremony in Bishkek , Vladimir Pronichev, the head of Russia's border service, warned; "There are tough tasks ahead of us. Trans-border crime is gathering pace in Kyrgyzstan. We know what kind of difficulties Kyrgyz border troops are facing. We intend to continue developing cooperation and our friendship."
I wonder how that "friendship" will go. Quinn-Judge seems to think that the Kremlin isn't at panic stations yet, reports Tynan:
Quinn-Judge said. "If the Russians were seriously worried, you would expect a more serious deployment of forces and equipment. Absent that, the weapons delivery seems more like a gesture of good will towards a government that, Moscow hopes, will be a little more consistent and compliant than its predecessor."
As the date of 2014 or even 2013 approaches with further US withdrawal and likely more Taliban encroachment, this may very well change. I don't play down the Russian threat the way the Soros-funded EurasiaNet and the oft-cited Soros-funded ICG do.
Indeed, Bakiyev's ouster stands as a lesson of what happens to Central Asian leaders who aren't "compliant" -- as has been remarked, those bazookas in April 2010 in Bishkek didn't grow out of tulip beds. While there was plenty of home-grown opposition sentiment to Bakiyev, it appears it had some help. In fact, it seems sometimes overlooked that Russian precipitated the April events by suddenly jacking up gas prices and affecting Bakiev and son's cushy fuel deals, including with the Americans at Manas.
As soon as Roza Otunbayeva -- educated in Moscow and Russian-speaking and of a certain Soviet generation -- came into office as an interrim leader, she made overtures to Russia and even asked Moscow to help quell the pogroms in June 2010. It didn't. That's important to remember when reflecting how/whether Russia will amp up its troop presence on the border. A powerful deterrent isn't just "Chechnya syndrome" or "Afghan syndrome" before it, but Uzbekistan, which definitely, definitely doesn't want Russian troops on or near that border, full stop -- and was a key factor in preventing the CSTO from becoming embroiled in the ethnic clashes.
Even so, the Russians stand ever-ready to meddle on pretexts just like drugs or thugs, and now they have more of a foothold with all this new gift of $16 million of military hardware. $16 million! That's a lot more than say, the $100,000 the US is now giving Uzbekistan for night-vision goggles and bullet-proof vests.
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