DUSHANBE -- Tajikistan's First Deputy Interior Minister Abdurahmon Alamshozoda has confirmed reports by RFE/RL's Tajik Service that 27 residents of the Yazgulom community in the volatile Gorno-Badakhshan Autonomous Region (GBAO) have been arrested.
Alamshozoda told journalists in Dushanbe on August 8 that the residents had been arrested on suspicion of being members of the Ansarullah Islamic group, which is banned in the Central Asian nation.
"Four more people have been added to the wanted list," Alamshozoda added.
It was the first official confirmation of the arrests.
Details of the investigation and the charges stemming from it remain unclear.
RFE/RL's Tajik Service has been reporting about the arrests of residents of Yazgulom for months, citing relatives of those arrested and sources close to law enforcement agencies in the tightly controlled former Soviet republic.
The majority of those arrested have been detained and held incommunicado for months after they were extradited from Russia earlier this year.
Residents of GBAO have been under pressure for years. A crackdown on the restive Tajik region intensified in 2022 after mass protests in May that year were violently dispersed by security forces.
Tajik authorities said at the time that 10 people were killed and 27 injured during the clashes between protesters and police.
Residents of the remote region's Rushon district have told RFE/RL that 21 bodies were found at the sites of the clashes.
Dozens of the region's residents have been jailed for lengthy terms on terrorism and extremism charges since then.
Deep tensions between the government and residents of the volatile region have simmered ever since a five-year civil war broke out shortly after the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991.
Still, protests are rare in the tightly controlled state of 9.5 million where President Emomali Rahmon has ruled with an iron fist for nearly three decades.