Four touring cyclists killed in Tajikistan. IS claims responsibility

[Nick H.]

Two Americans, one Dutch, one Swiss, hit by a vehicle then stabbed.  They were with five other cyclists, who survived. They were on the Pamir highway. You'd think there would be safety in numbers, but...

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-asia-45009816

https://www.outsideonline.com/2331976/american-cyclists-killed-isis-tajikistan

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PO6vde8TNnU

[woollypigs]

sad and man.

Read about it a day or two ago, gutted.

[Cunobelin]

IS is adept at this.


They have a claim that their leader is a direct descendant of the "Prophet" and all Muslims owe allegiance to him (and therefore IS)

Any incident carried out by a Muslim, is therefore claimed by IS on these grounds, even if they had nothing to do with the event at all

I would treat any claim by IS as dubious at best
 

[bludger]

Yes exactly it's cheap headline grabbing bollocks that the media always falls for because it drive more clicks to their own webpages.

[Cudzoziemiec]

I'm not sure it makes much difference, if you were a Western cyclist thinking of touring Tajikistan. They were clearly killed in a deliberate attack – knives and other weapons – and whether that was by IS, AQ, Taliban, local gangsters or some other band of terrorists, or let's say the IRA, doesn't make a huge deal of difference to the situation.

[LEE]

I'm not sure it makes much difference, if you were a Western cyclist thinking of touring Tajikistan. They were clearly killed in a deliberate attack – knives and other weapons – and whether that was by IS, AQ, Taliban, local gangsters or some other band of terrorists, or let's say the IRA, doesn't make a huge deal of difference to the situation.

Same logic as the West being horrified by Assad killing kids using gas but being generally fine about killing kids using Western Smart Bombs.  Just as dead.

"Phew!  Thank goodness they weren't mown down and hacked to death by IS"

[Nick H.]

The FCO is keeping an open mind:

On 29 July 2018, 7 tourists from western countries were cycling near Danghara in southern Tajikistan when a collision occurred between a vehicle driven by a local man and the cyclists. This appears to have been a deliberate attack. Four of the 7 cyclists were killed by the vehicle’s impact and wounds sustained in a subsequent knife attack carried out by the occupants of the car. This is the first incident of this kind in Tajikistan and the motives are not yet known. In light of this incident we recommend UK tourists to Tajikistan, particularly those hiking or cycling in the southern part, to exercise extreme caution and vigilance during their visit.

The Outside story raises some questions. The two American victims had a blog:

Most of the couple’s blog posts express the joys of living simply from the seat of a bike. The final post, however, written by Austin from Kyrgyzstan on July 11, reads ominously:

“We don’t make it very far. A gold sedan skirts by us once more. It parks up ahead. This time, two men exit the vehicle. They stand in the middle of the road blocking our path. Pozhaluysta! the first man says, and I can't tell if it’s an earnest plea or a cruel sneer. In Russian, a lot of things can sound like a cruel sneer.

Nyet! we shout. Leave us alone!

Lauren’s in front and she threads her way in between the two men. She keeps going. I make to follow. I gnash on my pedals, lean to the left, and get in between them.

And then the man on the right pushes me off my bike.” 

And the police seem to be covering things up in order to help the govt make political capital https://www.rferl.org/a/tajik-police-cyclist-attack-journalists-harassed/29407351.html

Days after a deadly attack on a group of foreign cyclists in a remote region of Tajikistan, information remains scarce on the possible road to radicalization of the suspects -- at least some of whom were said to have died in a shootout with security police and subsequently turned up in a video pledging loyalty to the militant group Islamic State (IS).

And Tajik authorities, who have publicly blamed not IS but a banned Islamic political party, appear eager to keep it that way.

An RFE/RL correspondent was detained by security forces on August 1 during a reporting trip to the southern town of Norak, the hometown of two of the suspects, and interrogated before having his electronic materials deleted and being forcibly taken to the capital, Dushanbe.

No legal grounds were given for the erasing of the materials, which included audio recordings of relatives and a former teacher of the suspects.

In the brutal July 29 attack on the foreigners, a car rammed into the group of cyclists before multiple attackers emerged from the vehicle and stabbed survivors, killing two Americans, a Swiss, and a Dutch national. Three other foreigners were injured in the attack before the assailants sped off.

IS claimed responsibility for the deadly incident and released a video showing five men -- at least some of whom appeared to resemble four men identified by Tajik officials as suspects killed in a confrontation with security forces -- pledging allegiance to IS's leader.

But the government has clung to its assertion that the ringleader was an "active member" of the Islamic Renaissance Party of Tajikistan (IRPT), which was Central Asia's only registered Islamic political party until the Tajik government banned it in 2015. It had tens of thousands of members when it was outlawed, and has since been labeled a "terrorist" organization by Dushanbe.

The RFE/RL correspondent, Orzu Karim, had conducted interviews with relatives of two of the government suspects and a former teacher in Norak before being stopped by security officials on August 1.

Karim identified himself as a reporter before the nearly two-hour police questioning.

After his video camera and audio recorder were confiscated, police erased Karim's interviews and drove him the 90 or so minutes to Dushanbe without letting him gather up his belongings at a nearby hotel. Neither would they allow Karim to be taken to his hometown, which lies the opposite direction from Norak.

Karim reported seeing one foreign journalist and two Tajik reporters being similarly questioned at the police station, although he was initially unable to contact them to hear their accounts of being in custody.

Authorities there have waged numerous campaigns to discourage young people from turning to radicalism, particularly in the face of figures suggesting that hundreds of young Tajiks were joining IS to help wage war in Syria and Iraq.

But the attack this week on the cyclists on a road near the Pamir Highway was the first of its kind on foreigners in Tajikistan, which borders Afghanistan, China, and fellow post-Soviet republics Kyrgyzstan and Uzbekistan.

Post-Soviet Central Asia's poorest country, Tajikistan's politics have been dominated since 1992 by President Emomali Rahmon.

Rahmon's administration on August 1 announced the creation of a "tourist police" corps to ensure "public order and the security accompaniment of tourists" as well as to "prevent crime" generally.

Official Tajik statements have all but ignored any IS component in the attack in favor of initial suggestions that members of the technically defunct IRPT were involved.

Some IRPT leaders have been jailed on charges that rights groups have publicly questioned, while others have fled to exile and continue to urge international support for removal of Tajikistan's ban on the party's activities.