Source: Interfax-Religion
Moscow, August 11, 2016
The Russian Federal Security Service (FSB), acting together with the Interior Ministry, has dismantled the activities of an extremist group that was using the internet to recruit militants for the Islamic State terrorist organization (outlawed in Russia).
"In the territory of the Sverdlovsk, Tyumen and Chelyabinsk regions, the FSB, acting in cooperation with the Interior Ministry of the Russian Federation, uncovered and dismantled the activities of cells of the internet community Rohnamo ba sui davlati Islomi [which means the 'guidebook to the Islamic state' in Tajik], created for propaganda of terrorist ideologies, for recruiting militants for ISIL, as well as for raising money to fund this terrorist organization," the FSB press center said.
The Rohnamo community, which, all in all, includes more than 100,000 natives of Central Asia living in Russia and abroad, mostly in CIS member countries, is coordinated by dozens of terrorism moderators based in Russia and countries of the Middle East and North Africa, the FSB press center said. The group's members are using encryption and anonymous file transfer protocols to keep their online communication secret, it said.
Twenty-seven searches were conducted at Rohnamo members' apartments in the Sverdlovsk, Tyumen and Chelyabinsk regions on August 10.
"Computers, mobile phones containing terrorists' propaganda videos, extremist literature, bank cards, as well as an arsenal of three pistols, four grenades, some 500 grams of plastic explosives, five TNT blocks weighing a total of one kilogram, and electronic detonators for them were confiscated," the FSB press center said.
The FSB investigative department opened a criminal inquiry against the cell's leader and three of its members on charges of organizing and participating in a terrorist community's activity.
