Tajik migrant deported from Russia for supporting Hamas

Russian law enforcement agencies have detained and handed over a Tajik migrant to Tajikistan for distributing videos of HAMAS.

According to Radio Ozodi, on January 31 of this year, Russian law enforcement officers detained 23-year-old Mukhamadnabi Jalilov at his workplace and took him away. For some time, there was no news about him. However, a few days ago, he appeared in the pre-trial detention center of the State Committee for National Security of Tajikistan in Dushanbe.

Witnesses reported that three employees of the Federal Migration Service of Russia and one person who identified himself as a representative of the Tajik authorities came to his workplace to detain Jalilov.

In Tajikistan, the migrant was arrested on charges of “organizing an extremist community and cooperating with banned organizations,” facing a prison sentence of five to eight years. At the same time, three other deported migrants were also arrested.

It is unknown which specific “banned organization” the deported migrants are accused of cooperating with. According to sources from Radio Ozodi citing case materials, “they distributed extremist content videos, including videos from HAMAS and the war in Gaza.”

So far, the authorities of Tajikistan have not officially commented on the detention of the migrants. His relatives are also not providing any details.

One of Mukhamadnabi Jalilov’s friends told the media that after he was detained at his workplace, they learned that Mukhamadnabi had shared videos on his social media pages that were posted online by HAMAS.

His friends also suggested that he might have watched videos posted on YouTube by the Tajik opposition, but did not participate in them.

Mukhamadnabi Jalilov is a native of the Yavan district. In Russia, he worked in logging.

According to media reports, Mukhamadnabi’s Telegram page features a photograph of Abu Obaida, a representative of the “Izz ad-Din al-Qassam Brigades,” the military wing of HAMAS.

Although Mukhamadnabi Jalilov was detained on charges of supporting HAMAS, the authorities of Tajikistan and Russia, unlike the USA and the European Union, do not recognize HAMAS as a terrorist organization.