Tajik woman gets lengthy prison term for allegedly fighting with Islamic State terrorist group In Afghanistan

A Tajik court has sentenced a local woman to 12 years in prison for allegedly fighting alongside Islamic Sate (IS) militants in neighboring Afghanistan in 2015.

The court in the city of Vahdat, near Dushanbe, on September 30 found 31-year-old Olima Kamolova guilty of taking part in the Afghan war in an area of Afghan territory that was at the time under the control of an affiliate of the extremist group.

A prosecutor had asked the court to hand Kamolova a 15-year prison sentence.

The mother of four has pleaded not guilty, saying she was pregnant twice while in Afghanistan, and that she would be unable to take part in any military operations there.

She insisted that her late husband Parviz Sangov brought her to Afghanistan and kept her there against her will before he was killed near the eastern city of Jalalabad.

Kamolova was detained by Afghanistan’s government forces before being repatriate along with her children earlier this year after she appealed to Tajikistan’s authorities in January, asking them to help her return.

But she was arrested in Tajikistan in July and charged with taking part in a military conflict abroad, which is a crime in the Central Asian nation.

In recent years, thousands of Central Asian citizens have joined the IS group in Syria, Iraq, and Afghanistan. They were in many cases accompanied by their wives and children.

Source: RFERL