DUSHANBE, June 1, 2015, Asia-Plus – Tajik OMON (special police unit) commander Gulmurod Halimov who joined Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL) group in Syria has been declared an international wanted.

An appropriate notice on this subject has been posted on Interpol’s website. 

We will recall that the special police unit commander Gulmurod Halimov who has been missing for weeks reappeared on the Internet, claiming that he has joined Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL) militants in protest at official restrictions on religious observance back home.

In a video posted on YouTube on May 27, Colonel Gulmurod Halimov says that Tajik labor migrants "must stop serving infidels" in Russia and join ISIL in Syria and Iraq in order to establish Shari''a law in other countries, including Tajikistan.

Halimov reportedly joined Tajik police force in the early 1990s and attended training courses in Moscow and Baton Rouge, Louisiana, in the last several years.  He was appointed as commander of the special police unit on 20102.