Tajik police have arrested two men in connection with an explosion near the Khatlon military prosecutor’s office in Qurghon Teppa, the capital of Khatlon province that left one person dead.

An official source at the Interior Ministry says an operation has been carried out in the village of Zarbdor on the outskirts of Qurghon Teppa.  “Father and son were arrested on suspicion of involvement in the March 12 blast in Qurghon Teppa,” the source said.  He refrained from identifying the suspects or giving further details, saying the investigation into the last was under way.   

Recall, the incident took place on March 12 at about 9:30 pm.  According to the Interior Ministry’s website, a 67-year-old Hasanboi Rahmonov, an ethnic Uzbek, who worked as a guard at the technical lyceum next to the building of the Khatlon military prosecutor’s office, was killed as an explosive device detonated in his hands.  

The Prosecutor-General’s Office said on March 16 that the lyceum guard was a casual victim of the blast.  The man picked up a suspect package on his way from a shop and was going to bring it to the nearest police station when the package blew up in his hands.  

“The preliminary investigation has established that Hasanboi Rahmonov did not have any contacts with terrorist or criminal groups,” a source at the Prosecutor-General’s Office said.

According to some media reports, the criminal case has been launched under Article 179 of Tajikistan’s Penal Code (terrorist act). 

Meanwhile, the report by The Hague-based International Center for Counter-Terrorism (ICCT) -- War by Suicide: A Statistical Analysis of the Islamic State's Martyrdom Industry -- says that 27 Tajiks had carried out suicide operations in Iraq and Syria from December 2015 to November 2016, the highest among all foreign individuals whose country of origin had been identified.  

The report says 186 foreigners died as suicide operatives in the year in question and most came from Tajikistan, followed by Saudi Arabia, Morocco, Tunisia, and Russia.  Tajikistan’s presence at the top of this list is curious.  Over the twelve months in question, significantly more Tajiks died in VBIED (Vehicle Borne Improvised Explosive Devices) and inghimas operations in Syria and Iraq than any other foreign national, the report said, noting that the figure is even more striking when considered on a per capita basis, and suggests that Tajiks were being singled out for use in suicide attacks at least in part because of their nationality.  While a similar phenomenon appears to be the case with the other top-scoring states, the disproportionality of Tajikistan is strange indeed.  It is beyond the scope of this paper to determine why this might be, but it is worth noting that the man currently rumored to be IS’s highest military authority – Gulmurod Halimov – is a Tajik national, the report added.