Historical Dictionary of Terrorism Third Edition

ISLAMIC MOVEMENT OF TURKISTAN • 313On 21 June 2001 the U.S. Department of Justice charged 13 Saudinationals and one unnamed Lebanese collaborator with the attack onthe Khobar Towers, among them the Saudi Hezbollah commanderAdbul Karim Muhammad Hussain al Nasser, for whose capture theU.S. State Department’s Rewards for Justice Program is offeringa $5 million bounty.ISLAMIC LIBERATION ORGANIZATION (ILO). Lebanese branchof the al Tahrir al Islami group originally founded in Egypt that wasitself an offshoot of the Sunni Muslim Brotherhood. This Lebanesebranch was responsible for the 30 September 1985 kidnapping andhostage holding of four Soviet diplomats. Outside the Soviet embassyin West Beirut, armed gunmen abducted the Soviet commercial attachéand embassy second secretary at gunpoint while other gunmen abductedthe cultural attaché and embassy physician on a nearby street.The group identifying itself as the Islamic Liberation Organizationcontacted Agence France-Press and demanded that the Soviets pressureSyria to cease its offensive against the Sunni Muslim Tawhid group inTripoli, which had been besieged by the Syrians for the preceding twoweeks. The group sent photographs of the recently abducted Sovietdiplomats and threatened to kill them if its demands were not met. On2 October the ILO killed Arkady Katkov, the cultural attaché, whohad been injured trying to escape and whose injuries had developedgangrene. On 4 October the Soviets evacuated their embassy in responseto an ILO threat to car-bomb the premises.The Soviets contacted Sunni and Shi’ite community leaders to intercedewith the ILO. On 30 October 1985, the three remaining hostageswere released, the Syrian offensive against Tripoli having been playedout in the intervening four weeks. The group has remained inactivesince 1985.ISLAMIC MOVEMENT OF TURKISTAN (IMT). Originally calledthe Islamic Movement of Uzbekistan, this is an Islamic fundamentalistand ethnonationalist group that originally sought to create anIslamic state in Uzbekistan but which later expanded its goal to encompassnot only Uzbekistan, but also the other Central Asian statesand territories having Turkic Muslim populations, namely, Kazakhstan,Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan, Turkmenistan, and the Chinese regionof Xinjiang. Its goal was to turn this region into a Pan-Turkist statecalled Turkistan. Hence, the group now refers to itself as the Islamic