TASHKENT. May 21 (Interfax) - A court in the south of Uzbekistan has given prison sentences ranging from four to eight years to three local residents after convicting them of being involved in an extremist religious organization, a law enforcement source in the republic told Interfax on Friday.
The convicted, who live in the Surkhandarya region near the border with Afghanistan and Tajikistan, are followers of Mullah Said Nursi (1873-1960), a Turkish religious scholar. The books written by him and Fethullah Gulen call for measures to overthrow secular governments and to replace them with Sharia rule. They are banned in a large number of countries, including Uzbekistan and Turkey.
"Obidzhon Toshpulatov, Chori Tagayev and Shavkat Mengniyezov were sentenced by the court to terms ranging from four to eight years in prison for participation in this religious extremism organization," the source said.
Toshpulatov and Tagayev studied in Turkey in the early 1990s, while Mengniyezov graduated from a local Uzbek-Turkish college, the source said.
They learned the basics of the organization's ideology at secret training centers set up by Turkish businessmen in Tashkent. Then they returned to the Surkhandarya region, where they opened a center promoting the organization's extremist ideas and to recruit new members.