24/7 Tass 83a
DUSHANBE, July 24 (Itar-Tass) —— Fifty-five militants were killed and 47 detained in Tajikistan in 2011, according to Tajik Interior Minister Abudrakhim Kakhkharov.
In his words, the majority of the killed militants were members of illegal armed units operating in eastern Tajikistan. They died in clashes with the police. Forty-seven detainees were charged with membership in the extremist religious party Hizb-ut-Tahrir, the terrorist Islamic Movement of Uzbekistan and other criminal groups, he said.
As for the situation in the pre-Pamirs Rasht region that had been unstable for the past two years because of the activity of the former irreconcilable opposition, the general said it stabilized and there were no reasons for worrying.
The minister noted though that they stayed alert. Two natives of the North Caucasus, who ran away from the Dushanbe detention center together with another 23 inmates in the small morning hours of August 23, 2010, were caught several days ago. “One of them was seized in the Dzhirgatal district of Tajikistan, and the other was apprehended in Bishkek, Kyrgyzstan,” he said.
The majority of the fugitives were taken back to prison, seven died in gunfire exchanges with the police and three were still missing, the minister said.