Kyrgyzstan has been gripped by a fresh wave of security anxieties after nine men belonging to a banned radical Islamist group broke out of a prison near the capital, killing three guards during their escape.
Authorities said five of the fugitives, who were members of the group, were captured in a nearby village after the escape, which occurred on the night of October 11.
All had been convicted on terrorism and extremism charges.
In an alarming indicator of security provisions at the detention facility in the village of Nizhny Norus, the escape appears to have been made possible by a power failure. Brownouts are a commonplace occurrence in Kyrgyzstan and their frequency tends to increase in the winter months.
The head of the prison service, Salamat Abdiyev, told reporters that the power was down for half an hour and that the electricity is frequently turned off due to weather conditions.
“We have a diesel generator, but that is to supply power to the [prison] perimeter,” he said in comments reported by AKIpress.
Adding confusion to the account, however, power company Severelectro later denied electricity supplies to the prison had gone down.
Abdiyev said the surveillance cameras had not been working for two weeks.
The fugitives, seven of whom were serving life sentences, escaped in the vehicle of one of the guards killed during the breakout. Abdiyev said the fleeing prisoners had not managed to seize any weapons or ammunition.
Prosecutors have said they will file charges of negligence against employees at the detention facility No. 50.
The five men recaptured on October 12 were caught in the village of Leninskoe, around 12 kilometers from the jail.
One of the four still remaining at large as of Monday evening local time was Altynbek Itibayev, who was arrested following the clash in Bishkek between security forces and a group of alleged Islamic terrorists. Authorities at the time described the armed group involved in that incident as an Islamic State group cell.
On Monday, the government described Itibayev and his fellow fugitives as members of a group called Jaysh al-Mahdi. The State Commission for Religious Affairs has described Jaysh al-Mahdi in an official publication as being the same as the Shia militia that arose in Iraq following the U.S. invasion there.
Itibayev is therefore, going by the declarations of Kyrgyz officials, member of both a radical Sunni Muslim terrorist group and an Iraq-based Shia militia.
Itibayev was earlier jailed for the 2009 murder of Sanjar Kadyraliev, a member of parliament with then-President Kurmanbek Bakiyev’s ruling Ak Zhol party. Itibayev was later amnestied and released from jail.
Jaysh al-Mahdi has been accused by authorities of being responsible for numerous attacks in Bishkek, including the bombing of a synagogue in 2010 and an explosion near the Palace of Sport that same year.
In December 2010, members of Jaysh al-Mahdi are said to have raided the home of U.S. citizen Richard Norton, who was living with his family in the village of Sokuluk at the time, and robbed him of $20,000 worth of possessions and a vehicle.
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