Uzbek police have detained 21 people suspected of being linked to an extremist militant group operating in Syria, police said on Wednesday.
Police said the detained men were under the “ideological influence” of another Uzbek man who was a member of the Katiba al-Tawhid wal-Jihad group comprised mostly of Central Asians.
They planned to finance the group and join it, police said in a statement, according Reuters.
Thousands of people from the ex-Soviet region joined various radical groups in Syria and Iraq when ISIS temporarily seized part of their territory.
