Police in southern Russia has detained two brothers who belong to the transnational extremist Islamic movement Tablighi Jamaat banned in Russia, local police said on Saturday.
Police have been hunting down Islamic extremists in Russia, which has been rocked with terrorist bomb attacks ever since the Kremlin-led campaigns in Islamic Chechnya in the 1990s.
“They professed extremist ideas in Astrakhan [southern Russian city dominated by Moslem Tatars] trying to engage traditional Moslem believers into their activities,” a police spokesman said, adding that searches had revealed extremist literature and a grenade.
The spokesman said the two brothers had been pronouncing radical extremist ideas out loud near the central mosque of Astrakhan since 2010, calling for religious enmity and hatred to all those who do not share these ideas.
Founded in 1927, Tablighi Jamaat has branches all over the world. This radical movement does not recognize the state as a legitimate form and is intolerant to other religions.
Russia’s Supreme Court banned Tablighi Jamaat in May 2009 as extremist and threatening national and confessional peace and stability in Russia and its territorial integrity.
In late March 2010, twin suicide bomb attacks hit the Moscow metro. At the end of January, a suicide bomb attack ripped through the Domodedovo international airport outside the capital.
The combined attacks left 77 people dead and scores wounded and prompted police to tighten security at public transport hubs across the city.
Both incidents were blamed on extremist Islamic militants from the North Caucasus.
ASTRAKHAN, May 14 (RIA Novosti)