A court in Yekaterinburg’s Verkh-Isetsk district on October 6 issued an order extending pretrial detention of four Tajik jihadi recruiters until February 8, 2017, according to Russia’s Ural.ru news website.

All of them are members of an international radical online community entitled “Rohnamo ba Sui Davlati Islomi” (translated from Tajik as Guide to the Islamic State).

They are reportedly charged with participation in a terrorist organization and trafficking in weapons and explosives.   

Recall that Russia’s Federal Security Service (FSB) press center reported on August 15, 2016 that Russian security officers have broken up the cell of an international radical online community entitled “Rohnamo ba Sui Davlati Islomi” that was operating in Sverdlovsk, Tyumen and Chelyabinsk oblasts.

Members of this online community have reportedly been engaged in propagating terrorist ideology, recruiting people into the Islamic State (IS) terrorist group, as well as collecting financial aid for this terrorist organization.

This radical online community has more than 100,000 members, primarily in the CIS member nations, and it is coordinated by dozens of moderators staying in the Russian Federation, Middle East (Syria, Iraq) and North Africa (Egypt), the FSB press center noted.

On August 10, FSB officers reportedly made 27 raids on residences of members of this online community in Yekaterinburg (16 raids), Tyumen oblast (6) and Chelyabinsk oblast (5).

Computers and mobile phones containing materials propagating religious extremism, subversive literature, bank cards, three pistols, four hand grenades, about 500 grams of plastic explosives, five TNT cartridges weighing one kilogram and detonators for them have been confiscated from them, the FSB press center said.

Criminal proceedings have reportedly been instituted against the cell leader and its three activists and an investigation is under way.