Georgia’s State Security Service (SSG) has announced the arrest of three unnamed Georgian nationals linked to the Islamic State. The agency says the suspects intended to bring in senior members of the terrorist organisation to Georgia, which they planned to use as a transit territory for attacks.
The SSG announced the arrests on Monday, saying its Counter Terrorism Centre had carried out operations in five different, yet unspecified, locations in Georgia’s western Adjara region.
They said that the three Georgian nationals, who called themselves the Takbir Jamaat, had connections with Islamic State leaders abroad, who instructed them to form a terrorist group in Georgia.
The SSG said that the three suspects intended to illegally bring members of the Islamic State to Georgia to receive and accommodate ‘like-minded people’, provide logistical services, and use the territory of Georgia as a transit hub for terrorist operations.
The three suspects are being charged with the illegal acquisition and storage of firearms, ammunition, and explosives, joining a foreign terrorist organisation, and assisting in terrorist activities. The sentences collectively carry up to 17 years of imprisonment.
The SSG attached a video showcasing several weapons, explosives, grenades, sim cards, and money they had confiscated as evidence.
Aside from a high-profile shootout between the Georgian authorities and members of an IS cell in Tbilisi in 2017 and the Pankisi Crisis of 2002, Georgia has not witnessed any major terrorist attacks since the emergence of the IS. Sources such as the US State Department’s Bureau of Counterterrorism’s country profiles on terrorism have indicated that no Georgian nationals were identified to have traveled to Syria or Iraq to participate in terrorist activities between 2019–2023.
In its latest available report, published in 2023, the bureau said that there were approximately 30 displaced and 10 detained Georgian nationals in northeast Syria.
Abu Omar Al Shishani, a Georgian national born as Tarkhan Batirashvili, had also served as a senior member of the IS until his death in 2016.
Tata Shoshiashvili
