DUSHANBE (TajikT) — Four young Tajik, including two minors, were recruited in the IG by an English teacher and detained at the time of preparations for an illegal crossing of the border into Afghanistan, in order to join the supporters of the Islamic State.

“On July 13, officers of the anti-drug department detained three residents of Dushanbe — Safarmukhammad Abdunazarzod, Mustafo Kurbonov, Khodzhimuhammad Faizulloev and a resident of Rudaki district Muhammad Nabizod in the Shamsiddin Shokhin district, 5 km from the Afghan border”, Radio Ozodi reports. The detention of the four young men is confirmed.

The education ministry explained that the boys were influenced by their 27-year-old English teacher, who was also detained. This teacher was born in Dushanbe. In 2012, after graduating from the Tajik Institute of Foreign Languages, he began to teach English in short-term courses.

The director of one of the Dushanbe schools, Sabzagul Saidov, in which three of the detained people were studying, said that during their schooling they were no different from their peers. According to her, over the past two months, she was repeatedly invited to a conversation with law enforcement agencies in connection with the detention of former wards.

The investigators of the anti-drug agency who are investigating the case say that one of the detainees Safarmuhammad Abdunazarzoda, who has relatives living in the Shamsiddin Shokhin area, was the inspirator for the idea of moving to Afghanistan. For half a year the young men were preparing for the plan X. On the other side of Pyanj they contacted a certain Abu Obid, supposedly a citizen of Tajikistan, who gave them a test task consisting of photographing a border checkpoint. “After the assignment was completed, Abu Obid, having made sure of the seriousness of the guys’ intentions, said that he would help them to go to Afghanistan. At the time of the preparation of the illegal border crossing, the Quartet was arrested”, the source said. According to him, all four young men grew up in dysfunctional families without fathers.