Farooq, Umar. "The Hunted". Foreign Policy, 2 April 2015.

Farooq, Umar. "The Hunted". Foreign Policy, 2 April 2015.

• On December 10, 2014, Abdulla Buxari, an Uzbekistani imam and opposition member living in Istanbul was killed by Zelimxan Maxtiev, a Chechen gunman after a $250,000 bounty was placed on Mr. Buxari by the Karimov regime.
• Mr. Buxari arrived in Instabul in 2002 and had since opened 5 madrassas were he extolled a conservative form of Islam which supported jihad against the Putin administration in Chechnya, the al-Assad regime in Syria, and the Karimov government in Uzbekistan.
• At the time of his death, Mr. Buxari had thousands of students, mainly Uzbeks, Tajiks, and Chechens from the diaspora communities in Turkey. He supplied social support to poor communities, and widows of warfare.
• Evidence indicates that Mr. Maxtiev worked as part of a larger hit squad including other Russian nationals, led by Sobir Shukurov and coordinated by an Uzbekistani Intelligence Officer known by the code name 'Misha'.
• Mr. Maxtiev, Mr. Shukurov, and another Russian named Eldar Aslan, were taken into police custody, where they revealed critical elements of this story.
• The Intelligence Officer known as Misha was ordered last year to assemble a hit squad to assassinate four critics of Islom Karimov, three Uzbekistani nationals and a Kyrgyz imam sympathetic to the opposition.
• The list also includes Muhammad Salih, the leader of the outlawed Erk Party, and his son Timur Salih. Both live in Istanbul after fleeing other assassination attempts in Norway.
• The Karimov regime has a very long arm and pursues political dissidents across the globe. Following diplomatic pressure, in 2011 a court in Almaty extradited 29 Uzbekistani nationals accused of religious extremism back to Uzbekistan where they faced 15 year sentences. This goes back farther, with Murod Juraev, an early opposition parliamentarian being extradited for training militants in 1994.
• If a country will not extradite a criminal, Uzbekistan will sometimes turn to kidnapping. In 1999, after Ukraine refused extradition, Uzbekistani intelligence agents kidnapped Muhammad Bekjanov, the brother of Muhammad Salih and a prominent journalist, and took him to face a 13 prison term in Uzbekistan.
• Mr. Salih says that the hope for a peaceful transition to being ruined by the United States' continued military support to the Karimov regime. He further expresses fears that a continuation of the current situation will drive youth towards extremist ideologies or militancy.
• The normalization of civil relations between Uzbekistan and the United States occurred around 2011, suspiciously timed considering the recent shutdown of a major supply line into Afghanistan by the Pakistani government. The author implies that the American government is buying Uzbekistani permission to stabilize Afghanistan.
• Dilorom Isxakova, A human rights activist in Uzbekistan provides a story of dubious authenticity regarding the government's oppressive stance towards Islam. She claims to have known a man in his 30s who left for Turkey and then joined ISIS following the arrest of two of his brothers in a mass crackdown on practicing Muslims after a police officer was killed.