OSH, Kyrgyzstan -- The imams of five mosques in Kyrgyzstan's southern city of Osh were removed from their posts today, RFE/RL's Kyrgyz Service reports.
A local government-established special commission checked 53 mosques in the city and sacked the five imams for "leaving their mosques without supervision during ethnic clashes in mid-June" and for "propagating nontraditional Islam."
The commission was established after Kyrgyz security troops carried out a special operation last month to neutralize an illegal armed group in the city.
Three members of that group were killed and one blew himself up.
The house the group was using belongs to Farkhat Nurmatov, the imam of a local mosque.
Some 400 people were killed and hundreds more injured in the June clashes between ethnic Uzbeks and Kyrgyz in the south of the country.
Read in Kyrgyz here
A local government-established special commission checked 53 mosques in the city and sacked the five imams for "leaving their mosques without supervision during ethnic clashes in mid-June" and for "propagating nontraditional Islam."
The commission was established after Kyrgyz security troops carried out a special operation last month to neutralize an illegal armed group in the city.
Three members of that group were killed and one blew himself up.
The house the group was using belongs to Farkhat Nurmatov, the imam of a local mosque.
Some 400 people were killed and hundreds more injured in the June clashes between ethnic Uzbeks and Kyrgyz in the south of the country.
Read in Kyrgyz here