KHUJAND, Tajikistan -- Two hundred and ten residents of Khatlon Province have joined the "Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant" in Syria since 2011, Davlatsho Gulmakhmazoda, chairman of the Khatlon Province government, said in a news conference in Khujand July 11.
The majority of them are unaccompanied young men, but some took their families with them, he said.
Thirty of the Khatlon Province militants have been killed so far, he said.
The Tajik government most recently estimated that 1,094 citizens have gone to Syria and Iraq, with about 150 of them being killed so far.
A new law, Article 406, prescribes up to 12 years of imprisonment for those who fight in foreign wars for money. However, militants who voluntarily return to Tajikistan to surrender and have no crime awaiting punishment will not be prosecuted.
Outreach work enabled Tajikistan to repatriate 147 citizens who fought or sought to fight in Syria and Iraq, the general prosecutor's office said recently, without citing a time frame. Some of those 147 turned around and went home before even reaching Syria or Iraq.
