Jamaat in two moves

Facing the “Islam of cellars and garages” for the first time, the enforcement agencies did not understand what they dealt with

23 people got behind the bars on the case of “Islamic jamaat” Investigating the murders of several couples making love in the wood, enforcement bodies of Tatarstan figured out a powerful Islamist militarized organization whose alleged goal was establishing of Islam caliphate and organization of terrorist acts along the entire Povolzhye region. The jury trial found 17 people to be guilt of preparing explosions - in KAMAZ plant and Kazan helicopter plant – and to be guilt of other serious crimes. Now the Supreme Court of Tatarstan must decide if the convicted people - some of whom did not have time or even did not intend to commit terrorist acts – will get 8-15 years required by the state prosecutor. Though, this is a peripheral issue. The “system” issue is if our security services and law enforcement bodies are ready to deal with the absolutely new for Russia phenomenon – so called “Islam of cellars and garages”. This issue is well familiar to Europe, and now, as it was proved by the trial in Kazan, it is becoming to be actual in Russia.

At the end of the 90’s a few people from Tatarstan got to the field camp Caucasus managed by Khattab. In 1998 Khafiz Razzakov – it was him who shot the loving couples in the wood for insulting the norms of Islam – got acquainted there with Airat Kamaletdinov who had gone through the military training in the camp. In March 1999 they returned home.

Razzakov and two others involved in today’s trial – Ilgam Gumerov and Ilshat Sharafullin – went repeatedly to the “Caucasus” camp in June 1999. But that time the gunmen took them for FSB agents and made them hostages with other two tens volunteers from Tatarstan. At the court Gumerov told about the terrible things he experienced while captive until the gunmen let them go in spring 2000.

After returning to the city of Naberezhnye Chelny, the “Caucasian captives” kept their relationship and would attend the mosque together. A rather big group of Muslims gathered around them, including Nafis Kalimulin, a criminal authority from the city of Aznakaevo, who brought to the community five religious teens. Gumerov, as the eldest among the community, was elected Amir (Head) of the jamaat (community).

Although, it was talked much about “non-traditional” Islam professed by the accused, this jamaat did not have obvious conflict with official Muslim community. No one from the group studied Islam in Arabic countries and that applies to their spiritual leader Salavat Nurgaliev, who is the teacher in a Madrasah.

Actually, this is what this group sentenced in Kazan differs with from jamaats of the North Caucasus, for example, from the jamaat of Kabardino-Balkaria that, being a religious community initially, grew into a military organization that became a sector of Caucasian front of Shamil Basaev organizing an attack on the city of Nalchik in 2005.

The jamaat in question did not have any support from abroad: it was not financed by foreign charity funds and no one supplied them with weapons. The found with them machine guns and pistols belonged to Kalimulin and were the memories of his criminal past in the middle of the 90’s. It’s dubious that even the amir Gumerov retained any relations with Caucasian underground.

The community members lived in various Tatarstan cities: Naberezhnye Chelny, Elabuga, and Aznakaev. Those people belonging to different generations – from boys from Aznakaev to adult men like Gumerov and Kalimulin – were united with their belief and strong wish to do something for the Islam how they figured it out for themselves. They also paid much attention to the sports practicing.

Mostly, they had very simple occupations: some worked in parking lot; some were self-employed taxi-drivers. Sharafullin, the only person with higher education among them, was a foundry worker in KAMAZ. It’s only Kalimulin (criminal authority) and small businessman Latypov who had some real money.

It appears that the jamaat consisted of over 50 persons. However, many of them did not know one another, as the jamaat consisted of several communities. It did not have vertical hierarchy or obligatory membership, and it was open to new people without binding them with any rigid purposes. However, there were brutes too. Denis Gabdulkhakov and Vener Khazetdinov left Tatarstan with their wives just before the arrests began. They stole horses in the neighboring Bashkiria hoping to pass the border that way. When they found themselves to be chased after they began to shoot and killed a police officer and wounded a local.

Analyzing the testifying by Sharafullin, 32, the community was far from nationalism. He told how he addressed once the meeting of the Tartar nationalists “It’s no nation, but religion what we need. Islam is above nation.” After that he had to beat off the meeting’s participants with a distinguisher.

Special services began to work about the jamaat after a series of mysterious murders in the wood near Naberezhnye Chelny. The investigation found Khafiz Razzakov. Although he admitted only the 9th murder committed by him – that was a woman who said disrespectfully about Islam – few have doubts about his guilt in other murders. As all the killings were done on the religious basis, that caused a special interest by the enforcement agencies and the interest increased after they learnt that Razzakov had attended the Khattab’s military camp. Then the Republic MVD, UFSB and the Prosecutor’s Office of Tatarstan began to deal with the case.

About 50 persons were detained at the end 2004. Half of them were released, while 23 members of the community were tried, five among them being under age. All of them were accused of forming unlawful armed unit “Islamic jamaat” and preparation of terrorist acts, also membership in Basaev’s and Maskhadov’s organizations.

The investigation affirms that the unit consisted of 6 combat groups led by amirs and that it had common money fund. The amount found, though, was only …6 thousand rubles (that’s less then $200) passed by one of the accused, businessman Salavat Latypov, to amir Gumerov. The persecution considers it to be a financing of the terrorist organization. The jamaat was equipped with 4 Kalashnikovs, 7 pistols, a gun Izh-58, a rifle SVD, 5 grenades and some cartridges. Plus explosive, it was 580 g of plastit, according to the judge.

The persecution believes that the members of the unit have built a military camp where they “were trained for jihad”. Really, in the Urals, in the Beloretsky district of Bashkiria, a dugout was found where, in investigators’ opinion, the members of the jamaat buried weapons and food. However, no guns were found there because “they were hidden so well that it was impossible to find them”, as the indictment said.

The persecution affirms that in November 2003 in a flat in Naberezhnye Chelny the amir of the jamaat Gumerov said he was acting being commissioned by Khattab (who had been killed by that time) and Basaev who had sent him to the city for organizing terrorist acts in Bashkiria and Tatarstan with the purpose of seizure the power and making a caliphate. That statement was recognized to be a sufficient evidence of direct relation to the Caucasus underground.

Then the version appeared that in 2004 the members of Jamaat decided to start preparations for terrorist acts planned to be done in 2007-2008. Namely, it was planned to blow up KAMAZ plant in Naberezhnye Chelny, water intake facility in same town, OAO Nizhnekamskneftehim in the city of Nizhnekamsk, and also helicopter plant in Kazan. Allegedly, the explosives were to be delivered from Chechnya after three years. Then the version was “perfected”. In investigators’ opinion, soon Gumerov set a new task of organizing explosions in the places of mass presence of people in Kazan in August 2005 during festive events dedicated to 1000th anniversary of the city, and to begin shooting the police officers.

Enforcement officers are “system” people and they act in accordance with a scheme. The scheme is very simple: if we deal with more than two people, that means we deal with an organization; if it is an organization, it must have its own structure, weapons and financial sources.

Almost all those features - that special services are used to look for - can be found with the “Islamic jamaat” if you wish it. However, 6 thousand rubles cannot be called a financing, and 4 machine guns and half a kilo of explosive does not seem to suffice for blowing up KAMAZ plant, let alone seizure of power.

Of course, a question arises: why aren’t those people persecuted for real crimes they committed? Murderers must be convicted for murders; others must be sentenced for illegal possession of weapons. It’s no good idea making up the story of global plot with the purpose of overthrowing the existing Constitutional regime. Why don’t we analyze as a new phenomenon the practice by a spontaneously formed radical group, as it is obvious that this group is not the last one? But such objectives wouldn’t fit the triumphant reports to the superiors and it is absolutely not clear how to deal with such groups when they are at large – it’s easier just to put them behind the bars.

“It’s a group of believers that got to face a trial and many of them even do not know one another” says confidently Elena Ryabinina, an employee of the “Civil Assistance” Committee who is watching the trial in the capacity of observer. In her opinion, people must be persecuted for concrete crimes and the investigation just made up a terrorist organization and the people are tried as its members.

Civil rights advocates, relatives and lawyers state tortures to have been applied to the accused during investigation. Well, it is known that security services are not able to work in a different way, especially when it concerns the unlawful armed units.

Of course, it’s exactly such groups that are potentially dangerous. They are autonomous, they can appear in any region in the country, they act without any external financing, and a couple of people inside of them will always have a stock of some weapons, just for raising their authority. However, this is not the fact that all of them will become terrorists.

Exactly this type of Muslims communities, known as “Islam of cellars and garages”, that is appearing in Russia, is failed to deal with by our security services. It’s easier for the latter to represent the former as unlawful armed units and then to apply the usual scheme.

As a result, some people will be sentenced only because they had been present in some “structures” that had not made a single terrorist act. It looks like the members of a Karate club were all put behind the bars just because a couple of murderers and one psycho, dreaming aloud of a coup d’etat, had turned out to be among them. This is not the fact that after such trials the other spontaneous communities of little literate from religious point of view believers, not trusting to official spiritual leaders, will become less radical. On the contrary, they may get additional courage with the myths of “martyrs”. Possibly, Russia will face another European problem – recruiting for real terrorist organizations made in prison camps. And who knows what the “Islam of cellars and garages” may grow into on a particularly specific Russian ground.

Dossier

The term “Islam of cellars and garages”, often mentioned by French President Nikolas Sarkozy, appeared in Europe as a definition for spontaneous Muslim communities that do not admit the “official” Islam. The matter is that most Islamic clergymen come to Europe from abroad, having studied for example, in Saudi Arabia. They have no real knowledge of the problems their European charge is facing – that’s immigration, unemployment, xenophobia instances. It’s often that they do not even know the local language. Consequently, the Islamic European youth do not want to recognize them and condemn them for preaching the “Islam for the rich”. Then the youth go to unofficial mosques that are usually organized by communities in the basements and garages and where preach mainly self-appointed ministers whose knowledge of the Koran is dubious, while the extent of radicalism is rather high.