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As part of the program of fighting crime, the law enforcement agencies of Azerbaijan have carried out their subsequent special operation in Terter district unmasking an organized criminal group of extremist nature, whose members propagate religious intolerance and discrimination, as well as recruit the citizens of the country, Azerbaijani information agency APA reports.

According to the article, a resident of the district has turned to the Ministry of Internal Affairs of Azerbaijan saying that his underage son had been recruited by the members of radical religious movements and sent to Syria where he fought for illegal armed groups. 

With joint efforts, the Special police, the employees of General Directorate for Combating Organized Crime in Azerbaijan, Terter district police and the prosecutor's office detained 4 members of that organization: previously convicted Zulfugar Ibrahimov, Mubariz Mirzaliyev, Shamseddin Abdullazade and Vugar Aliyev, the agency reports. 

According to the article, a machine-gun with two magazines, 800 grams of explosives, 9 hand grenades with fuses, 170 cartridges, a significant amount of religious literature and discs which are banned to spread, as well as other evidence was found and confiscated during the search of their flats.

In its turn, Azerbaijani news outlet Haqqin.az highlights that two of the above-mentioned four detained people are the comrades-in-arms of well-known Azerbaijani MPs. Detained Vugar Sabiroglu Aliyev was a deputy representative of the international affairs of the party Umid headed by the MP Iqbal Agazade. Zulfugar Ibrahimov was the head of the Terter branch of Great Establishment party, whose leader is the Azerbaijani MP Fazil Mustafa.

Note that Azerbaijani terrorists are fighting in the ranks of various terrorist groupings that operate in Syria, Afghanistan and Pakistan. According to the Azerbaijani news outlets, over the past three years almost 200 Azerbaijani terrorists have been killed in Syria alone. The outlets have more than once reported the liquidation of commanders among Azerbaijani terrorists.

The relationship between international terrorist groups and Azerbaijan originated in the early 1990s. That time, the Azerbaijani army, having failed in the aggression against Nagorno-Karabakh Republic (NKR), retreated with losses. Trying to save the situation, the Azerbaijani leadership, headed by Heydar Aliyev, attracted to the war against the Armenians of Nagorno-Karabakh international terrorists and members of radical groups from Afghanistan (groupings of Gulbuddin Hekmatyar), Turkey ("Grey Wolves", etc.), Chechnya (groupings Basayev and Raduyev etc.) and some other regions.

Despite the involvement of thousands of foreign mercenaries and terrorists in the Azerbaijani army during the war, the Azerbaijani aggression against Nagorno-Karabakh Republic failed, and the Baku authorities were forced to sign an armistice with the NKR and Armenia. However, international terrorists found ties in Azerbaijan, and used them in the future. Recruitment was conducted among Azerbaijanis, who then were sent to Afghanistan and the North Caucasus, where participated in the battles against the forces of the international coalition and Russian organizations. In recent years, the citizens of Azerbaijan are actively involved in terrorist and extremist activities in Russia, Afghanistan, Syria and Iraq.