Kazakhstan officials on Thursday said that members of an alleged extremist group currently in detention regularly sent money to Pakistan and Afghanistan. Some of 24 men arrested in late August on suspicion of planning terrorist acts had collected and transferred funds for possible illegal use, said Boranbai Galiev, a government spokesman.
The recipients were Kazakhstan nationals living in Pakistan and Afghanistan, he said. The state investigation into the intent of the transfers and possible links between the recipients and insurgent groups in the two countries was continuing, Galiev said, in comments to Interfax.
Kazakhstan special forces troops in a series of August 31 raids arrested men living in the west Kazakhstan city Atyrau because the allegedly all were members of the group planning terrorist acts. One suspect died in a gun fight with soldiers. The normally peaceful central Asian country saw a suicide bombing and shoot outs between security forces and suspected Muslim extremists earlier in the year.
The August arrests were Kazakhstan's largest terrorism-related security operation in years. Kazakhstan President Nursultan Nazarbayev on September 1 called for increased state control over religious groups, saying some of them could harbour extremists. Human rights protection groups have claimed the Nazarbayev regime has used alleged links to terrorist groups as a pretext to crack down on his opponents - a charge denied by Nazarbayev.
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