(RTTNews) - A court in Azerbaijan sentenced 26 people to prison terms ranging from 2 to 15 years for their involvement in a deadly August 2008 attack on a mosque in the capital Baku, which left two people dead.

Amongst those sentenced on Thursday included 23 Azeris, one Russian and two Turkish nationals. The charges pressed against them included terrorism, murder, formation of an illegal group and arms possession.

Azeri officials said that the suspects were members of an terror network known as the Forest Brothers. The alleged mastermind behind the attack - Ilgar Mollachiyev - was killed in a military operation in the neighboring Russian republic of Dagestan in September 2008.

Azerbaijan is a predominantly Shiite Muslim country with a population of 8.3 million. The country is strictly secular under President Ilham Aliyev, a U.S. ally, and gets most of its income by selling oil and gas to the West from reserves in the Caspian Sea.
Though most of Azerbaijanis have a very relaxed outlook towards religion, experts say that the threat from Islamic militants is rising gradually within the country. President Aliyev's opponents, however, claim that he is using the threat of extremism as an excuse for persecuting members of the opposition.

In recent years, several alleged Islamic militants have been sentenced to long prison terms in Azerbaijan for plotting attacks on U.S. and Israeli embassies and for attempting to overthrow Aliyev's secular government.

While 20 members of the strict Wahhabi Islamic sect were awarded prison sentences ranging from two to eighteen years in June, some 15 members of another Islamist group was sentenced to long prison terms in December 2007 over a foiled coup attempt.

Azerbaijan court sentenced last month a group of Islamic militants, including two Lebanese nationals, to prison terms ranging from 12 to 15 years each, finding them guilty of plotting to attack the Israeli embassy in the capital Baku and the Russia-rented Qabala radar station in the north.

by RTT Staff Writer

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