The prison incident took place in the Ghayroghum district of Soghd Province in northern Tajikistan – in fact not far from Andijon. The freed inmate was reportedly arrested on charges of illegal weapons possession, and was later on accused of having ties with the IMU as well. The Russian news agency Interfax reported a Kyrgyz source as saying that one of the persons who freed the inmate was involved in the killing of eight Tajik policemen in 1997, and is wanted by both Tajikistan and Uzbekistan for committing terrorist acts.

After the attackers, who were probably three to four men, freed the IMU suspect – and killed prison director Bobojan Gadibayev in the process – they disappeared in the direction of the nearby Tajik-Kyrgyz border by car. Following the attack, Kyrgyzstan tightened controls at its border checkpoints with Tajikistan. The security services of the two countries are working together to detain the group. Representatives of the interior ministries of both countries met in the beginning of February in the Tajik city of Isfara, which borders Kyrgyzstan, to coordinate their actions to detain the suspects. But officials from both countries didn’t exclude the possibility that the criminals have already entered Kyrgyzstan’s Batken Province that borders Tajikistan and lies on the fringes of the Fergana Valley.

Notwithstanding the joint efforts to detain the group, the criminals have not been found yet. Some observers believe IMU cells are still active in the region. If true, these might well have helped the escapees. Others however believe that the IMU, which is designated as a terrorist organization not only in Central Asia but also by Western countries, is more or less a spent force.

The IMU, which was set up by Juma Namangani and Tohir Yuldashev in the mid-1990s with some help from the Taliban, had as its initial aim to force Uzbek president Islam Karimov from power, and to create an Islamic state in Uzbekistan. To this aim, the IMU undertook armed incursions in Kyrgyzstan and Uzbekistan in 1999 and 2000. It has also been accused of involvement in several terrorist acts in the region, such as the string of bombings in Uzbek towns in the spring of 2004.

However, the main base of the movement in 2001 was Afghanistan. Therefore, it is believed that most of the organization was destroyed in the US-led campaign against the Taliban that year. Namangani was reported killed in November 2001. But Yuldashev escaped with at least some followers to the Pakistani tribal belt, bordering Afghanistan. According to some reports, IMU remnants may have served there as Osama bin Laden’s bodyguard.

This, however, did not prevent Central Asian governments from continuing to accuse the movement of several terrorist acts. For example, in January, the Tajik authorities accused the IMU of involvement in two explosions near the Ministry of Emergency Situations in Dushanbe, in January and June 2005 – although the IMU has never claimed responsibility for them.

However, there is a second theory regarding the prison break, which to some extent exonerates the IMU. According to sources in northern Tajikistan, both the attackers and the freed inmate would be members not of the IMU but of another, less known organization: “Bayat”.

This group became known to the public only in January 2004, after the murder of a Baptist missionary and pastor who was active in the north of Tajikistan. Later, the group was also accused of targeting the homes and shops of sellers of alcohol with arson – as well as local mosques. After these events it turned out that a number of alleged Bayat members were once members of the Islamic Renaissance Party of Tajikistan (Tajikistan’s only legal Islamic party). But while some officials said that Bayat is another militant Islamist movement (with possible links to the IMU), others argued the movement is a purely criminal group.