A court in Uzbekistan has handed prison sentences to people deemed to have been members of an Islamic fundamentalist group.
A law-enforcement official said on February 27 that 11 members of the organization known as Jihadism received prison terms of between five and 12 years.
The group was operating in the country's eastern region of Namangan in the restive Ferghana Valley, which is shared with neighboring Kyrgyzstan and Tajikistan.
Uzbek officials say the Jihadism group has been spreading radical Islam in the region since the early 1990s.
The region's Kyrgyz territory was used by the banned Islamic Movement of Uzbekistan as a transit point to enter Uzbekistan from Afghanistan and Tajikistan in the early 2000s.
A law-enforcement official said on February 27 that 11 members of the organization known as Jihadism received prison terms of between five and 12 years.
The group was operating in the country's eastern region of Namangan in the restive Ferghana Valley, which is shared with neighboring Kyrgyzstan and Tajikistan.
Uzbek officials say the Jihadism group has been spreading radical Islam in the region since the early 1990s.
The region's Kyrgyz territory was used by the banned Islamic Movement of Uzbekistan as a transit point to enter Uzbekistan from Afghanistan and Tajikistan in the early 2000s.
