TASHKENT -- Police in Uzbekistan's capital, Tashkent, have detained a group of alleged members of a banned Islamic movement.
The Tashkent city police department said in a statement on January 26 that officers apprehended nearly 30 people suspected of being members of Katiba al-Tawhid wal-Jihad (Brigade of Monotheism and the Holy War), a group that was labeled as terrorist and banned in the Central Asian state in 2016.
The statement did not reveal when exactly the group was taken into custody.
According to the statement, the individuals were allegedly involved in propagating the teachings of the banned group to youth in Tashkent and other regions of the country.
They are also accused of recruiting Uzbek nationals to the group's illegal armed units in Syria.
Authorities in the predominantly Muslim former Soviet republic have said that thousands of Uzbek citizens have joined different Islamist militant groups in Syria and Iraq in recent years.