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MOSCOW (News Agencies) - According to Interfax reports, Russia's Federal Security Service (FSB) claimed on Tuesday to have identified a network of Islamist cells operated by the Muslim Brotherhood across the former Soviet Union. Islamist groups set up by the Islamic organization had been discovered in 49 regions of Russia and the CIS states (ex-Soviet republics, minus the Baltics), the FSB said in a press statement. "The main purpose of the extremists in Russia is to instigate separatist sentiments in Muslim regions," the statement said, adding that the Muslim Brotherhood was linked to Osama bin Laden and other Islamists. The FSB (formerly the KGB) said the Brotherhood was "providing ideological, military and financial support to the separatists" in conflict zones such as Chechnya where the Russian army has been battling Chechen fighters for over a year. Meanwhile, the Central Asian states of Kyrgyzstan, Uzbekistan and Tajikistan have been destabilized since August by a wave of cross-border attacks from Islamists allegedly backed by the Taliban in Afghanistan. The FSB statement named one of the Muslim Brotherhood affiliates as the Moscow branch of a Kuwaiti nongovernmental organization, the Society for Social Reform. It said "large quantities" of Islamic propaganda advocating the overthrow of democratically elected governments had been seized during searches at the society's office and at the homes of its members of staff. |
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