SIMFEROPOL, May 12. /TASS/. Four followers of the Hizb ut-Tahrir terrorist organization have been detained in the city of Bakhchisarai in Crimea, the republic’s Prosecutor-General Natalya Poklonskaya told TASS on Thursday.

"Officers of the Crimea and Sevastopol department of the Russian Federal Security Service detained members of a terrorist organization and the organizer of this cell in the city of Bakhchisarai. Searches are underway," she said, adding that a criminal case was opened against three Bakhchisarai residents on charges of participating in a terrorist organization and one more person was charged with organizing terrorist activities.

"It has been established that one of those detained, being the leader of a local cell of the terrorist organization, has been engaged in secret anti-constitutional activities by means of conducting propaganda campaigns among local residents to recruit them to his terrorist organization and holding secret meetings," Poklonskaya said.

As many as six followers of Hiz ut-Tahrir have been detained in Crimea since the beginning of the year. The terrorist group was active in Crimea’s resort cities of Yalta and Alushta and maintained friendly relations with the Mejlis of the Crimean Tatars, a public movement outlawed in Russia.

Hizb ut-Tahrir al-Islami (Islamic Party of Liberation) is an international religious and political organization founded in 1953 in Jerusalem. Its goal is to remove all the non-Islamic governments and bring back the Muslims to the "truly Islamic life."

Russia’s Supreme Court banned Hizb ut-Tahrir in 2003 as a terrorist organization.