Boston blasts: FBI looks at Pakistani terror group

Islamabad, April 23 (IANS) The US Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) is looking at a Waziristan-based terror group's link with the two brothers suspected of the deadly Boston bombings, a media report said.

The News International reported that Islamic Jehad Union (IJU) has come under FBI's focus for its alleged links with Tamerlan and Dzhokhar Tsarnaev, two brothers of Chechen descent who allegedly carried out the blasts in Boston April 15, killing three people.

FBI believes that the two brothers were linked to the Islamic Jehad Union which has recruited Chechens, Uzbeks, Europeans and Arab Muslims to fight with them against the US forces in Afghanistan, it cited the American media as saying.

"That the Islamic Jehad Union is headquartered in the Mir Ali area of North Waziristan is a general knowledge thing for most of the terrorism experts in Pakistan," said the media report.

The IJU was initially known as Islamic Jehad Group (IJG), which was founded in March 2002 by two Uzbek rebels of Islamic Movement of Uzbekistan - Najmuddin Jalolov alia Abu Yahya and Suhael Buranov alias Abu Huzaifa.

It was banned by the US State Department in 2005 as a Foreign Terrorist Organization. The IJU set up its headquarters in the Mir Ali area of North Waziristan.

Islamic Jehad Union maintains close ties with the North Waziristan-based leadership of Al Qaeda and the Haqqani militant network, said the media report.

Central Asians, including Chechens and Uzbeks, and Turks and Germans make up a significant portion of the terror group.

In April 2004 it had first claimed responsibility for a series of suicide bombings around Tashkent and Bukhara, killing 47 people.