Eight held in Turkey for Islamist group propaganda
Source: Reuters
ISTANBUL, Feb 4 (Reuters) - Turkish police have detained eight people suspected of spreading propaganda for Hizbullah, a violent Turkish Islamist group active mainly in the 1990s, security officials said on Sunday. The eight held in the past few days in the southern province of Adana were suspected of spreading propaganda for Hizbullah at meetings of a legal but shadowy Islamic group, the Mustazaflar Association. Hizbullah, which wants to replace Turkey's secular order with a state based on Islamic sharia law, emerged in southeast Turkey in the late 1980s during fighting between Kurdish separatist guerrillas and Turkish troops. The group, not believed to be linked to the Iran-backed Hezbollah movement in Lebanon, killed scores of people, mainly targeting Kurdish rebel sympathisers or prominent Kurdish citizens. That led to accusations that it had state approval. However, Ankara denied those charges and in 2000 starting cracking down on the group.
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