DUSHANBE, March 2, 2009, Asia-Plus  -- Tajik law enforcement authorities are continuing investigation into case of criminal group suspected of attacking the Pamir Casino in the Roudaki district last month.

As it had been reported earlier, three members of the organized criminal group, including two officers from the police special unit, OMON – Ravshan Homidov and Tohir Rahimov, were detained in Dushanbe on February 19.  The ringleader Tavakkalkhouja Nizomov, who is an officer with the main border directorate within the State Committee for national Security (GKNB), managed to escape.

Members of this group are suspected of having committed a number of grave crimes in the territory of the country, including recent attack on casino in the Oq Qurghon jamoat in the Roudaki district, some 20 kilometers south of Dushanbe.  A group of armed persons in masks broke into the Pamir Casino in Oq Qurghon on the night of February 15.  The gunmen beat guards and visitors during the attack and seized some 40,000 US dollars.

The source at the Ministry of Interior (MoI) told Asia-Plus today that the preliminary investigation has established that members of that criminal group took two Russian citizens – Vasily Polokhin and Vladimir Fruzhinin – hostage on July 5, 2008.

“One of members of the criminal group, unemployed Khurshed Islomov, stopped Polokhin and Druzhinin in the Varzob district on July 5, 2008, representing himself as police officer,” said the source, “They were stopped allegedly on suspicion of having been involved in drug trafficking.  The criminals took them to Islomov’s house in Dushanbe, where they held them for a month demanding ransom from their relatives.”  The criminals released them after receiving a gold watch and a car, the source said.