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U.S. State Department: â€œAzerbaijan actively opposed terrorist organizationsâ€

19 August 2011 09:48 (UTC +04:00)

The country stepped up efforts and has had some success in reducing the presence of terrorist facilitators and hampering their activitiesâ€, the report reads.
â€œLaw enforcement bodies continued to pursue terrorist groups and facilitators operating in Azerbaijan. In October 2009, a Baku court sentenced two Lebanese nationals, Ali Muhammad Karaki and Ali Hussein Najmeddin, to prison terms of 15 years each, and sentenced four Azerbaijani accomplices to terms of two to 14 years. The court found that the group was planning attacks on the Israeli Embassy. Karaki and Najmeddin were released in a prisoner exchange with Iran and deported in August 2010, along with 12 Iranian nationalsâ€, the U.S. State Department said.
â€œCountering terrorist finance, the Azerbaijani government continued to implement its law on anti-money laundering and counterterrorist financing (AML/CTF) and established a Financial Investigative Unit (FIU). In October, the Central Bank prepared an action plan to bring Azerbaijan’s AML/FIU into conformity with the standards of the UN, the Financial Action Task Force (FATF), and other international organizations and conventionsâ€, the report reads.