From Buryat Said to Tolik Jihadi. Said Buryatsky was a quiet boy at school. Why did the criminal investigation take so long?

Abu Saad Said al-Buryati(Arab. أبو سعد سعيد البورياتي ‎‎) (known as Said Buryatsky; birth name Alexander Aleksandrovich Tikhomirov; February 10, 1982, Ulan-Ude, Buryat Autonomous Soviet Socialist Republic - March 2, 2010, Ekazhevo, Ingushetia, Russia) - member of terrorist groups, Islamic preacher and one of the ideologists of the North Caucasian armed underground. On March 4, 2010, sources in Russian security forces disseminated information that Said Buryatsky was killed in Ingushetia. The identity of the murdered man was confirmed by the results of a forensic examination carried out in Rostov-on-Don. On March 6, 2010, the President of Ingushetia Yunus-bek Yevkurov confirmed the death of Said Buryatsky.

Alexander Aleksandrovich Tikhomirov was born on February 10, 1982 in the city of Ulan-Ude Buryat Autonomous Soviet Socialist Republic. Father is Russian, mother is Buryat. According to the Trud newspaper, “from an early age he was raised by his Chechen stepfather.” IN adolescence studied at a Buddhist datsan. At the age of 15 he converted to Islam. Independently (according to other sources, under the influence of Chechen friends) he studied Islamic literature. He took the Islamic name Said.

Later he studied with various respected scholar-sheikhs in Egypt and Kuwait. Attended lectures by Sheikh Mahmoud Misri and Sheikh Muhammad Yusri, and also studied with the famous sheikh and preacher Muhammad Hassan. According to the Guraba website, “among students of that time he was known for his sincerity towards religion and constant reading Islamic books. Knew by heart “40 hadiths” of Nawawi with sharkh, “Aqida at-Tahawi”, “Umdat al-Ahkam”.

He worked in the Dar ul-Akram organization and collaborated with the religious publishing house Umma.

Since 2002, he began recording lectures on religious topics, which quickly spread among Islamic youth. Among his most famous lectures are the cycles "Righteous Predecessors", "Trip to eternal life» , "Talbis Iblis"(from Arabic “Satan’s veil”), “100 stories of unjust deaths” and others. Also engaged in translation from Arabic into Russian of religious documentaries(“Crimes of the Shiites through the ages,” “Description of the Prophet’s prayer”).

At the beginning of 2008, Said Buryatsky received a video letter from the famous Arab field commander Muhannad and decided to join the North Caucasian armed underground. A few months later, he secretly arrived in Chechnya, where he met with the leader of the underground, the so-called. "amir" terrorist organization"Caucasian Emirate" (Imarat Caucasus) by Dokka Umarov and gave him the Islamic oath (bayah).

Tikhomirov's joining the armed underground caused a mixed reaction among Russian-speaking Muslims. Publicist Heydar Dzhemal, who has repeatedly expressed sympathy for terrorists, called Tikhomirov “a symbol of a new generation in the epic of the Caucasian struggle,” emphasizing that “we have seen preachers (bearers of da’wah) belonging to various ethnic groups before. We saw Avars, Laks, Karachais, Circassians, Arabs... But all these worthy people were either representatives Caucasian area, or, at least, belonged to one or another traditionally Muslim people. IN in this case for the first time, on behalf of the Caucasus Emirate, a person of Eurasian origin, in whose veins Russian and Buryat blood flows, acts as an ideologist, as an authoritative representative.”

Echo of Moscow journalist Yulia Latynina said about Said Buryatsky: Such a Buryat Che Guevara, a Mujahideen internationalist...

In the following months, Said Buryatsky took part in sabotage operations and militant attacks. While in the forest, he recorded several video messages, audio lectures and articles about jihad and the situation in the North Caucasus, which were published on Kavkaz Center and other extremist sites.

According to Russian law enforcement agencies, Said Buryatsky was involved in the assassination attempt on the President of Ingushetia Yunus-bek Evkurov and the organization of a terrorist act in Nazran. Said Buryatsky also took responsibility for blowing up the Nevsky Express train.

The former intelligence chief of the disbanded Vostok battalion, Khamzat Gairbekov, said: “Tikhomirov was one of the most dangerous figures in the leadership of the Caucasus Emirate - he was responsible for training suicide bombers and ran a network of sabotage schools.”

According to the President of the Chechen Republic Ramzan Kadyrov, Alexander Tikhomirov - "the main ideologist of the bandit underground" and it was he who prepared the suicide bomber Rustam Mukhadiev, who detonated a bomb on Teatralnaya Square in Grozny on July 26, 2009. Said Buryatsky did not deny his involvement in such attacks, but, according to him, his help consisted of preparing “suicide belts”, cutting reinforcement to create fragmentation damage, etc. He assessed Tikhomirov negatively information Agency“Chechnya Today,” characterizing him as “an ignoramus who has picked up the tops of religion,” “a werewolf in a turban,” who “needs the blood of the Chechen people.”

On July 30, 2009, the Investigation Department of the Ministry of Internal Affairs of the Chechen Republic opened a criminal case against Alexander Tikhomirov on the grounds of a crime provided for in Part 2 of Article 208 of the Criminal Code of Russia: “participation in an armed formation not provided for federal law" The basis for starting an investigation before opening the case was video recordings and photographs in which Tikhomirov appeared with militants and which were posted on the Internet.

Ramzan Kadyrov, assessing Tikhomirov’s calls, said: “This is said by a person who has no idea about Islam. Dokku Umarov and similar bandits listen to him. These people call on Chechens to hate their history, traditions, and culture.”

At the end of August 2009, on the Hunafa website ( information resource Ingush armed underground) there was a message that Said Buryatsky was personally driving the mined GAZelle car, which rammed the gates of the Nazran city police department on the morning of August 17, 2009 and blew up the building. The power of the explosion, which according to official data killed 25 police officers and injured 260 people, ranged from 400 to 1000 kg, according to various estimates. TNT equivalent. The building of the Nazran City Department of Internal Affairs was completely destroyed.

Two days later, this information was refuted by the command of the Ingush underground, and after some time a video appeared on the Hunafa website in which Said Buryatsky personally denied his death and said that another militant was driving the car.

On March 4, 2010, reports from Russian security forces appeared that during a counter-terrorist operation in the Nazran region of Ingushetia, near the village of Ekazhevo, Said Buryatsky was killed.

According to the FSB, on the morning of March 2, special forces units discovered and blocked a group of militants on the outskirts of the village. The militants dispersed across several houses and on the territory of an abandoned farm. During a firefight that lasted several hours, several militants were killed, and the survivors surrendered. After a special operation in Ekazhevo, law enforcement officers discovered a large number of weapons and explosives (several grenade launchers, a machine gun, machine guns and pistols, more than three thousand rounds of ammunition, nine 50-liter barrels of sodium nitrate, three powerful homemade explosive devices).

At the scene of the collision, a badly burnt corpse was discovered, with almost no head, and with it a passport was found in the name of Alexander Tikhomirov (real name of Said Buryatsky). Forensic examination in Rostov-on-Don also confirmed this information. RIA Novosti, citing a high-ranking source in the North Caucasus Federal District, reported that Tikhomirov’s corpse will be buried in an unmarked grave, which is due to the practice of not releasing the bodies of terrorists to relatives.

On March 6, 2010, the head of the FSB of Russia A.V. Bortnikov reported to the President of the Russian Federation D. Medvedev that Said Buryatsky and the four Kartoev brothers were killed, and 10 more people involved in the explosion of the Nevsky Express train in November 2009 were arrested. . Bortnikov said that “genetic examinations of the bandits were carried out for involvement in the bombing of the Nevsky Express train, committed in November last year. All these materials give reason to believe that they took part in this crime.” According to him, material evidence was found at the site of the special operation that is directly related to the train bombing. In addition, components of explosive devices were found “identical to those used to blow up the Nevsky Express train in 2007.”

As the FSB Central Operations Center reported, “in one of the households (in Ekazhevo) an underground workshop was discovered that was used by bandits to make homemade explosive devices.” “During its inspection, material evidence was found indicating the involvement of T. Kartoev’s bandit group in the bombing of the Nevsky Express in 2009, as well as technical means, identical to those seized from the site of a similar terrorist attack in the Tver region in 2007.”

Ramzan Kadyrov expressed satisfaction with the liquidation of Tikhomirov, noting that the same fate awaits Dokku Umarov. Kadyrov also called Tikhomirov a bandit who worked for Western intelligence services.

According to Vadim Rechkalov: “After being exhausted from running through the mountains, starving and freezing, Said Buryatsky ran to his old friends Kartoev and called his mother in Ulan-Ude from their home phone. I miss you. And my mother’s phone, of course, was wiretapped.” It was thanks to this that the FSB was able to get on the trail of Said Buryatsky.

A significant part of Said Buryatsky’s activities before he went underground was criticism of various Islamic movements - Shiites, Sufis, and others. In a generalized form, information about the existing 73 currents in Islam was presented by Said Buryatsky in his lectures on the book of Abul-Faraj ibn al-Jawzi "Talbis Iblis".

According to the leaders of the special operation in Ingushetia, Sheikh Said Buryatsky was killed in the village of Ekazhevo. Destruction of one of the most known terrorists The Caucasus Emirate was confirmed by the President of Ingushetia Yunus-Bek Yevkurov. Doubts about his death...

According to the leaders of the special operation in Ingushetia, Sheikh Said Buryatsky was killed in the village of Ekazhevo. The destruction of one of the most famous terrorists of the Caucasus Emirate was confirmed by the President of Ingushetia Yunus-Bek Yevkurov. There can be no doubt about his death.

As part of the project “How the Underground Works” we give curriculum vitae Said Buryatsky.

Buryatsky was a very intriguing underground figure. Unconditional leader opinions among the youth of the Caucasian republics. A young, sober-minded theologian, whose appearance in the militant camp played into the hands of the ideologists of the Caucasian Emirate.

Alexander Tikhomirov was born in Ulan-Ude. They only drill after their father. His mother is Russian; he has no Caucasian roots at all. Until the age of 15, he was a Buddhist; he even studied, they say, in a Buddhist datsan. Then something happened to him, and he converted to Islam, from that time on becoming Said Abu Sad.

He has come a long way on this path.

Experts from the special services say that Tikhomirov’s appeal was influenced by friendship either with the Chechens or with the Ingush. All this looks doubtful. Here's what a man who lived next door to Tikhomirov in Ulan-Ude says:

“I lived on Khakhalov Street, next to clinic number seven, and studied at school number 51. It’s a so-so school, simple... I don’t remember many of them by sight, they usually came in a crowd, both girls and boys. They all looked alike, although we ALL walked the same way back then, we all dressed in the same Chinese market. He was an inconspicuous boy, gray and quiet. I think they beat him mercilessly. I can understand him. Why shouldn’t a gray kid from the gray backyards of the railway district of a gray city want something significant?

You can guess as much as you like what his motives were for starting to study Islam. I have little faith in the influence of my Chechen friends. What are the Chechens like in the city of Ulan-Ude in the mid-90s?”

Having matured, Said went to study in Moscow, but soon abandoned his studies: it seemed to him that the wrong kind of Islam was being taught in the Moscow madrasah. He continued his education at the Al-Furkan madrasah (Buguruslan, Orenburg region). This is a significant page in his biography. The names of individual graduates of the Buguruslan madrasah are known throughout the world. They were also among the terrorists who attacked the school in Beslan.

The prosecutor's office and the FSB did not like the Buguruslan madrasah very much. The local leadership was endlessly accused of extremist activities. Ultimately, the madrasah was closed in 2004. But before this time, Said Abu Saad managed to finish it and leave with a group of graduates to continue their studies in Egypt. There he studied for about three years and mastered Arabic perfectly. Then he moved to continue his education in Kuwait.

Returning to Russia, he got a job at the Moscow publishing house “Umma” as a translator from Arabic. Then he began to give his first lectures, which instantly gained incredible popularity. The topics of the lectures were not alarming. “The Dignity of Fasting”, “Hell”, “On Faith and Unbelief”. And if his colleagues decided to argue with him at this stage, then these disputes were exclusively theological in nature.

The story of his appearance in the Caucasus is very vague. Allegedly, Dokku Umarov himself called the angelic young man to carry the word of Allah to his warriors. And by that time, Said not only had formed a coherent point of view regarding the place of a real Muslim in this world - but also had problems with law enforcement officers in Moscow. And so he disappeared for some time, and then made himself known again - already in the ranks of the Ingush front of the Caucasian Emirate.

His sermons - mixed in Russian and Arabic - began to appear regularly on separatist websites. It was here, in the Caucasus, unconstrained by any boundaries, that Sheikh Said Abu Saad developed his charisma to its fullest extent. He began to speak not only on theological topics (although these predominate), he also touched on acute political issues of Russia’s situation in the Caucasus. One of the topics he often mentions is that the intelligence services have nothing to do with the Caucasus Emirate.

Of course, there were those who considered the rise of Said Buryatsky to be artificial. He was often reproached for calling himself a “sheikh” in vain, and for his knowledge being superficial. His ideological opponents (few) reproached him for his adherence to “low calm.” Said indeed very often builds his lectures on retelling stories drawn from holy books. The dissatisfied say: “What’s the story? Someone jumped, another ran, a third was killed. It's like a movie. It's easy to listen to!"

But, relying on simplicity of perception, Said Buryatsky, an excellent storyteller, achieved a goal that many, many preachers from the imarate could not achieve before him. He showed the young people that Islam is far from a boring thing. This greatly contributed to the popularization of terrorist ideas - just read the forums on propaganda sites.

Said had already been declared dead once. Shortly after the bombing of the Nazran city police department on August 17 last year, a video went viral in which he was sitting in a Gazelle with explosives and talking to the camera about what “gift” was waiting for the Ingush police. The credits at the end of the video say the following: “Said personally, driving a Gazelle car, blew up the lair of infidels and apostates of the Nazran City Department of Internal Affairs.”

A few days later, Said, alive, said in another video that there was an error. That it was not he who was driving that Gazelle, but only blessed the brothers to die.

This is Buryatsky's latest video. The websites of the Caucasian Emirate continue to post audio messages from him, but the messages in those messages are again about the abstract. There is no indication that these entries are recent.

Said disappeared, and disappeared ugly. His opponents had often reproached him before: “Why are you so praising the path of the martyr, while you yourself are strong only by talking?” Now they began to speak louder about something else: Said Buryatsky, as a phenomenon, was a creature of the special services - that is why he so vehemently disowned them. They brought him to the Caucasus, and they brought him out.

Buryatsky’s relatives, by the way, have not lived in Russia since he fell into extremism.

P.S.The next issue of the project “How the Underground Works” will appear in the upcoming issues of Novaya.

On the evening of March 4, security forces announced the destruction in Ingushetia of the militant ideologist and closest associate of Doku Umarov, Said Buryatsky, known in the world as Alexander Tikhomirov. A simple guy from Ulan-Ude two last year was a real headache for the intelligence services, who could not capture this talkative preacher of Islam. In the past, he has already fooled them several times, so the FSB will officially announce Tikhomirov’s liquidation only after a molecular genetic examination has been carried out.

Said Buryatsky was killed basically by accident. On the morning of March 2, security forces received information that the militants holed up in the village of Ekazhevo were preparing some kind of major terrorist attack, after which special forces of the Ingush FSB Directorate and soldiers internal troops blocked several houses on the outskirts of the village. According to a RIA Novosti source in the power structures of the North Caucasus federal district, before the operation, the special services had no information that Said Buryatsky was located in Ekazhevo.

The blocked militants fired back at law enforcement officers for several hours, but could not even wound anyone. The security forces, in turn, hit the houses with heavy fire and even used flamethrowers. In addition, they were supported by snipers, who, according to Kommersant, managed to shoot two militants who tried to escape from the besieged building.

Those who managed to escape settled on a farm nearby, where they continued to hold their defense. In the end, the federal forces won, killing six militants and capturing 15 or 16 people alive. At the same time, security forces found an entire arsenal on the farm: an RPG-7 grenade launcher, a Kalashnikov assault rifle, a Kedr submachine gun, a Makarov pistol, a shot for a grenade launcher, a hand-held anti-personnel grenade, five thousand rounds of ammunition and nine barrels with 450 kilograms of sodium nitrate.

SAID BURYATSKY “DIED” MORE THAN TIMES

As reported by the Russian news agency Novosti, spiritual leader North Caucasian separatists were killed as a result of an operation carried out by Russian FSB officers in the village of Ekazhevo, Nazran district of Ingushetia.

It is reported that as a result of the operation, which was carried out on March 2, six militants were killed and another 15 were detained. On the evening of March 4, Said Buryatsky was identified as one of the dead, the Caucasian Knot reports, citing sources in the Ministry of Internal Affairs. It is said that Buryatsky’s death will be officially reported after a forensic medical examination in Rostov-on-Don. Some experts are skeptical about the report of Buryatsky's death.

According to a source from the Interfax agency, a passport in the name of a resident of Ulan-Ude, Alexander Tikhomirov, was found on one of the corpses of the militants.

However, on the website of the North Caucasian separatists “Kavkaz-Center” (which is blocked by Kazakh Internet providers) the death of Said Buryatsky has not yet been reported. “There is no confirmation or refutation of this information from the leadership of the Mujahideen,” a short message on the website says.

It is worth noting that information about the death of Said Buryatsky had previously appeared. For example, in August 2009, it was reported that Said Buryatsky was personally driving a bombed Gazelle car that blew up the building of the Nazran city police department. As a result of the terrorist attack, according to official data, 25 police officers were killed and 260 people were injured. The building of the Nazran City Department of Internal Affairs was completely destroyed.

Two days later, Said Buryatsky personally denied his death and said that another militant was driving the car.

According to Russian law enforcement agencies, Said Buryatsky was involved in the assassination attempt on the President of Ingushetia Yunus-Bek Yevkurov and the organization of a terrorist act in Nazran. Said Buryatsky also took responsibility for blowing up the Nevsky Express train.

WHO IS SAID BURYATSKY?

Abu Saad Said al-Buryati, or Said Buryatsky (in the world Alexander Tikhomirov), is a well-known Islamic preacher in Russia and in the countries of the former Soviet Union and one of the ideologists of the armed extremist underground of the North Caucasus. He is 28 years old, he is a native of Ulan-Ude, his father is Buryat, his mother is Russian.

In the late 1990s, Said Buryatsky studied in Moscow at the Rasul Akram madrasah, and studied at the Al Furkan madrasah in the city of Buguruslan in Orenburg region, where he received an Islamic education from Arab volunteer teachers from Medina. Interestingly, several Kazakhs studied in this madrasah, some of whom later joined the ranks of the Chechen armed resistance.

In 2004, when the Russian FSB began to identify the first Kazakh citizens among the militants in the North Caucasus, the KNB of Kazakhstan hastily registered students studying in Buguruslan and Tatarstan.

From 2002 to 2005, Alexander Tikhomirov studied at the Fajr Center for the Study of Arabic, studied theology at famous university Al-Azhar in Egypt, and then from various authoritative sheikh scholars in Egypt and Kuwait.

After returning from Kuwait, he educated himself, worked at the religious publishing house “Umma” in Moscow, and served at the Moscow Cathedral Mosque.

Around 2002, Said Buryatsky began recording and distributing audio discs with Islamic themes. His lectures “Righteous Predecessors”, “Journey to Eternal Life”, “Talbis Iblis” (translated from Arabic as “Satan’s Veil”), “100 Stories of the Death of the Unjust” and others became very popular.

As for the beliefs of Said Buryatsky, on some Islamic Internet forums he was exposed as Murjiist (Murjiism is one of the heretical movements in Islam), others defended him as Salafi.

It is known that Said Buryatsky actively discussed ideology with another Russian preacher Rinat Abu Muhammad. Active educational activities, eloquence and Murjiite views of Said Buryatsky made him a great authority among the youth of Russia and the CIS countries. Almost all of his lectures are available for downloading and listening on the Internet, where Buryatsky regularly gives online lectures.

In 2004–2006, he traveled widely with sermons in the countries of the former Soviet Union. According to reports from local Internet sites, it is known that Said Buryatsky has visited Kazakhstan more than once, giving sermons in mosques in Aktobe, Almaty, Shymkent and Atyrau. There were even translations of his lectures into Kazakh.

In 2008, when North Caucasian militants proclaimed the creation of the so-called Caucasus Emirate, they managed to convince Said Buryatsky to join their ranks and go into armed underground.

In May of the same 2008, Alexander Tikhomirov secretly arrived in the North Caucasus, where he met with the leader of the Caucasian separatists, the “military amir of the Caucasus Emirate” Dokku Umarov and took the oath to him. In his lecture “How I went out to jihad and what I saw here,” Said Buryatsky actually legitimized the separatist armed resistance as religious, declaring that a holy war for Muslims was going on in the Caucasus - jihad.

It is believed that with the involvement of Said Buryatsky, the Caucasian separatists won a very important ideological victory in the souls of believers. Hundreds of volunteers began to flock to the Caucasus from all over the former Soviet Union, for whom Said Buryatsky was an indisputable authority, a kind of “spiritual Che Guevara.”

KAZAKHS ARE GOING TO JIHAD

There were a lot of ideological followers of Said Buryatsky in Kazakhstan who wanted to fight under the banner of the Caucasus Emirate. According to official information from law enforcement agencies, since 2008, in the Atyrau and Aktobe regions bordering Russia, many cases of young Kazakhstanis crossing the border on their way to the North Caucasus have been recorded.

Later, dozens of Kazakhstani citizens began to be detained at the border, who, after communicating with law enforcement officers, admitted that they were going to the Caucasus to participate in jihad, local media reported. However, some experts also talk about massive falsifications on the part of the special services, when it was enough for them to throw materials, floppy disks, and printouts with the sermons of Said Buryatsky to intractable young people.

As an officer of one security agency told a correspondent of our radio Azattyk, the Kazakh edition of Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty, on condition of anonymity, they managed to return several of these “volunteers.”

In 2009, we detained eight young Kazakh boys at once. After their interrogation, several of them admitted that they were going to war in the Caucasus. We sent them back to their homes in Atyrau and Aktobe, and passed their names on to the competent authorities,” the officer said.

Another shining example from reports of local special services - on July 29, 2009, in the suburbs of Makhachkala, FSB special forces were

Brothers Zhasulan Suleimenov and Kuat Zhobolaev, accused of creating the terrorist group Jamaat Al-Farabi, are in the dock. Astana, September 11, 2009.

A group of militants was killed, including five citizens of Kazakhstan. All those killed turned out to be young Kazakhs aged 20–30 years. Our radio Azattyk reported that three of them were residents of the city of Zhanaozen, Mangistau region.

Their relatives said that the victims listened to audio recordings of Said Buryatsky’s lectures, according to the local press. It is also known that one of those killed in Dagestan lived in Atyrau and was a student at a local university.

The special services also blamed two young Kazakhs convicted in Astana for creating the terrorist group Jamaat Al-Farabi for their passion for the ideas of Said Buryatsky. November 30, 2009 in Astana cousins Zhasulan Suleimenov and Kuat Zhobolaev were found guilty of promoting terrorism, public calls to commit acts of terrorism, and creating and leading a terrorist group. They were sentenced to eight years in prison, in a maximum security colony. The trial itself took place in a controversial atmosphere, with the defendants talking about falsifications of the KNB's evidence base.

A disabled person of the first group, Zhasulan Suleimenov, was detained in January 2009 in Ingushetia, where, according to him, he intended

Serik Iztaev, convicted in a “terrorism” case, shortly after returning from the army. Aktobe, May 2006.

Get treatment with the Koran. The young residents of Astana who accompanied him were arrested along with him.

In February, a court in Aktobe sentenced three local residents to 6 years and 7 months in prison on terrorism charges. Serik Iztaev, Askhat Turkumbayev and Daulet Yesenbaev were detained on July 24 last year while crossing the Kazakh-Russian border at the Karozek checkpoint for committing administrative offense. The Russian FSB handed them over to KNB officers. According to investigators, the young people planned to take part in terrorist acts in Dagestan.

As the Kazakh newspaper “Zhas Kazakh” writes in its issue dated February 12, 2010, when their children were handcuffed after the verdict was announced, the mothers began to lament: “Why did the authorities themselves allow Said Buryatsky to freely come to Kazakhstan? Why was he allowed to spread his teachings? Why do our children ultimately suffer, and not Said Buryatsky himself?”

DUMK AGAINST SAID BURYATSKY

According to the chief imam of the Atyrau region, Nurbek Esmagambet, the ideology of Said Buryatsky is alien to Kazakhstanis and does not correspond to the official views of the Spiritual Administration of Muslims of Kazakhstan.

Mosque parishioners often ask the question: is it possible to listen to the sermons of Said Buryatsky? We answer them that the aqida (religion - Author) of Said Buryatsky does not correspond to the views of the SAMK and is considered illegal, since it calls for armed extremism. Those who listen to Buryatsky's sermons do not attend official mosques. They are mainly followers of non-traditional religious movements in Islam. To protect parishioners from their harmful ideology, we specially installed a sign in the mosque that says that without the permission of the SAMK, any religious preaching is prohibited,” says Nurbek Esmagambet.

Imangali Mosque in Atyrau.

Meanwhile, according to Talgat, a parishioner of the Atyrau Imangali Mosque, who asked not to mention his last name, Said Buryatsky remains popular among the religious youth of Kazakhstan.

Despite the prohibitions, parishioners record his audio lectures on discs and Cell phones. There are many links to his sermons on the Internet. I believe that everyone is free to listen to everything that interests them and may be useful. After all, Sheikh Said of Buryat has lectures concerning purely religious, legal and social aspects of the life of Muslims. And the ban and persecution of sermons can only cause more interest among the Muslim community, says a parishioner.

PROPAGANDA OF TERRORISM IS A SEVERE ARTICLE

In Atyrau, 25-year-old Kanat Nurekenov was recently convicted for downloading and distributing a lecture by Said Buryatsky from the Internet. The court's verdict was announced on February 24, and the public was informed about it a week later. Kanat Nurekenov was sentenced to one year in prison.

The brief plot of the verdict is as follows: Atyrau resident Kanat Nurekenov was found guilty of downloading from the Internet in 2008 and distributing among his friends audio lectures of the Russian religious preacher Said Buryatsky. The court found that the sermons contained the ideology of the Muslim Brotherhood organization, recognized Supreme Court Kazakhstan is terrorist. Its activities are prohibited on the territory of Kazakhstan.

As the prosecutor of the city of Atyrau, Khabibolla Kasymov, told a correspondent of our radio Azattyk, the examination established that the audio recording of Said Buryatsky’s lecture contains terrorist propaganda.

- Mr. Prosecutor, why such a harsh punishment for downloading a recording from the Internet?

This is not just a downloaded recording, this is real terrorism propaganda. And this is considered one of the serious, difficult articles of the criminal code.

- Why did the criminal investigation take so long?

The examination of the confiscated religious material took a lot of time. Since we do not have this kind of experts, an examination was appointed in Almaty. Additional seized materials were sent. But in this case there was practically nothing to prove! It was known for certain that the seized discs contained propaganda of religious extremism and terrorism. Moreover, the convict distributed these materials among 20 people, says Atyrau city prosecutor Khabibolla Kasymov.

Relatives of the convicted Kanat Nurkenov categorically refused to give any comments to the Azattyk radio correspondent.