National Security Ministry
Minister Elmar Mahmudov gave the figures in an interview published today in official newspaper Azerbaijan.
'Twenty-five persons engaged in intelligence against Azerbaijan on the orders of foreign intelligence agencies were rendered harmless in 2009, and the courts passed judgments on 17 of them,' Lt-Gen Eldar Mahmudov said in the interview.
He said the National Security Ministry was working to protect Azerbaijan from terror threats.
'Forty-nine people accused of committing terrorist acts in the republic were detained, many weapons and explosives were seized from them. As a result of the measures taken against international terrorism, a 31-member radical religious group, consisting of Azerbaijani citizens planning terror attacks, was rendered harmless. Preventive measures were also taken against criminal groups planning contract murders,' he said.
'Over the past few years a group of Azerbaijani citizens who went to the lawless areas of Afghanistan and Pakistan to take part in Al-Qaeda and Taliban military training and operations have been brought to book. The criminal cases of 18 of them have been sent to court, four remain on the wanted list. An active member of the Forest Brothers armed group, who participated in the terror attack on the Abu-Bakr mosque in August 2008 and went into hiding abroad, was detained abroad in the last few days, brought back to the country and handed over to the investigation,' he said.
Drugs
The Ministry of National Security is continuing to tackle drug trafficking, illegal migration, human trafficking, money laundering, cyber-crime and other types of organized crime, the minister said.
'We combat drug trafficking through several prisms. We think drug addiction causes great damage to the gene pool and use all methods to combat it. Not only government agencies and public organizations, but the whole of society should be concerned about this problem. We also focus on drug trafficking as the main source of funding for terrorism. In the past year, 32 transnational drug trafficking organizations were intercepted, 1.141 tonnes of narcotics were confiscated and 114 people were brought to book in 38 related criminal cases. Serious cases of illegal migration, human trafficking and falsification of documents were identified and investigated.'
Mahmudov said that attempts to misappropriate cultural and artistic valuables and to take them out of the country had also been prevented.
Plastic card fraud
'In 2009, 15 criminal cases involving corruption and the economy were discovered. They include a gang of 15 criminals who used VISA cards belonging to foreigners to buy tickets for a variety of routes on Azerbaijani Airlines official website, causing substantial losses to AZAL, and another gang of five people who used the numbers and codes of foreigners' plastic cards to make substantial electronic payments.
Pipelines
'As international and regional competition increases over energy pipelines and communications links, the need grows for reliable security guarantees. With this in mind a new structure was created to take responsibility for this area as part of changes in the ministry last year.'
Mahmudov said that the National Security Ministry worked closely with the security services of other countries, without specifying the names of the countries. He said the ministry enjoyed good working relations with a range of international institutions including the United Nations, the Council of Europe, NATO, the OSCE, the International Committee of the Red Cross and GUAM.
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