Tajikistan Identifies IMU Suspects In 2005 Blasts

(RFE/RL) April 17, 2006 -- Tajikistan's interior minister, Khomiddin Sharipov, said today that militants from an Islamist group operating in Central Asia were behind bomb attacks in Tajikistan last year that killed one person.

Sharipov blamed the Islamic Movement of Uzbekistan (IMU), saying four IMU "associates" had been arrested, and two other suspects were still at large.

The blasts rocked Tajikistan's capital Dushanbe in January and June 2005. One man was killed in January's explosion.

The IMU, banned in many countries and identified as a terrorist organization by the U.S. State Department, was set up in the 1990s with the aim of creating a caliphate in Uzbekistan and other Central Asian states.

(Reuters with additional RFE/RL reporting)