• Authorities arrest Uzbek man in Idaho on terrorism charges

    By Pete Williams and Becky Bratu, NBC News

    Federal prosecutors say a man from Uzbekistan who has been living in Boise, Idaho, was arrested there Thursday and charged with plotting to support the Islamic Movement of Uzbekistan.

    Officials said 30-year-old truck driver Fazliddin Kurbanov had acquired parts that could be used to make a hand grenade, including a fuse and explosive powders.

    Kurbanov also distributed videos on how to make explosive devices but was "closely monitored by federal agents," prosecutors said.

    Officials said he began by accessing videos online about bomb making and then started buying the components. They said Kurbanov then reached out to the Islamic Movement of Uzbekistan to seek information on how to make explosives. During that time, he came to the attention of the FBI.

    Officials said Kurbanov had not managed to come up with any plots or pick any targets.

    He is scheduled to appear in federal court in Boise at 9 a.m. Friday, The Associated Press reported.

  • Missing Soviet war veteran found living in Afghanistan 33 years after combat

    Alexander Lawrentjew / dpa via AP

    Soviet war veteran Bakhretdin Khakimov went missing in action 33 years ago, but has now been found living under the name Sheikh Abdullah and working as a healer.

    By Reuters

    MOSCOW — A Soviet war veteran reported missing in action during fighting in Afghanistan 33 years ago has been found living as a local healer in the province of Herat, news agency Ria reported.

    The soldier, who was rescued by Afghans after being wounded in the first months after the Soviet Union's invasion in 1979, was tracked down by a Moscow-based group of war veterans.

    A native of the former Soviet Central Asian state of Uzbekistan, he now goes by the name of Sheikh Abdullah and has adopted the local dress and profession of the healer who nursed him back to health.


    The deputy head of the Afghan war veterans' committee said Abdullah, whose given name is Bakhretdin Khakimov, mostly had forgotten the Russian language and never tried to contact his relatives after suffering severe head trauma in the fighting.

    Alexander Lavrentyev, who met with Abdullah in Herat last month, said the veteran, who was 20 when he went missing, still bore the scars of his injury. His face is creased by a nervous tic and his hand and shoulder shake.

    "He was just happy he survived,'' Lavrentyev was quoted by Ria as saying at a presser in Moscow on Monday.

    The committee says it has found 29 of 264 soldiers still listed as missing from the bloody decade-long conflict. It said seven of those it contacted chose to stay in Afghanistan.

    Some 15,000 Soviet troops were killed in the fighting that followed the Soviet Union's incursion to support a communist vassal government in Kabul against Islamist mujahideen fighters armed by the United States.

    Copyright 2013 Thomson Reuters. Click for restrictions.

  • Uzbek refugee arrested in Chicago, charged with terrorism support

    By Reuters

    A refugee from Uzbekistan has been arrested in Chicago and charged with providing support to a suspected Islamic terrorist group that U.S. authorities say is seeking to overthrow the secular government of his Central Asian home country.

    Jasmshid Muhtorov, 35, who resides in Colorado, was taken into custody on Saturday at Chicago's O'Hare International Airport by FBI agents and made his initial court appearance in federal court on Monday, the U.S. Justice Department said.

    A criminal complaint charging him with providing and attempting to provide material support to a designated foreign terrorist organization was unsealed on Monday in federal court in Denver.

    Court documents filed in the case said Muhtorov indicated that he planned to travel overseas to fight on behalf of the Islamic Jihad Union, a Pakistan-based extremist group that opposes secular rule in Uzbekistan and seeks to replace the current regime there with a government based on Islamic law.

    Federal prosecutors said his arrest, capping a "long-term investigation," highlights "the continued interest of extremists residing in the United States to join and support overseas terrorists."

    If convicted of the charge against him, Muhtorov faces up to 15 years in prison.