MOSCOW, November 14 (RIA Novosti) – Police in Moscow have detained a suspected recruiter with the radical Islamist organization Hizb ut-Tahrir, the Interior Ministry said Thursday.
Officials said the 25-year old man was from the Central Asian nation of Tajikistan and had previously been deported, but that he had obtained forged documents and returned to Russia.
The ministry said in a statement that the man is suspected of trying to recruit new members to Hizb ut-Tahrir and was distributing leaflets with extremist content at a mosque in Moscow in late September.
Police said they had previously apprehended another individual, from Kyrgyzstan, at the same mosque openly calling during Friday prayers for people to join Hizb ut-Tahrir.
Hizb ut-Tahrir, an international Islamic political group believed to have been established in the Palestine territories in the early 1950s, promotes the creation of a geographically sweeping Caliphate operating under strict sharia law.
The group was ruled extremist and banned by Russia’s Supreme Court in February 2003.
It is viewed with suspicion by authorities, but is still allowed to operate, in many Western countries.