Tuesday, February 14, 2012

Russia

Tatarstan Arrests Former Guantanamo Bay Prisoners

A prisoner at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba

Kazan, 31 August 2005 (RFE/RL) -- Tatarstan has arrested two former prisoners at the U.S. detention facility at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, for alleged terrorist activities.

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August 31, 2005

Kazan, 31 August 2005 (RFE/RL) -- Tatarstan has arrested two former prisoners at the U.S. detention facility at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba for alleged terrorist activities.

Deputy prosecutor Farid Zagidullin today said that Airat Vakhitov and Rustam Akhmyarov were arrested in Moscow and are now in a jail in Tatarstan.

A spokesman for Tatarstan's Prosecutor's Office (Anvar Mukhamedzyanov) said the arrests are strictly linked to their alleged terrorist activities in Russia.

Vakhitov and Akhmyarov are among seven Russians who were extradicted from Guantanamo last year to Russia, where they were briefly jailed.

Vakhitov was an Imam at a mosque in Tatarstan. He was arrested in 1999 in Moscow after a series of terrorist attacks in the city. He was later released for lack of evidence. He later spent time in Afghanistan, where U.S. forces captured him.

(Interfax, AP, RFE/RL's Tatar-Bashkir Service)

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