A Kyrgyz court in the northern city of Naryn has sentenced a 28-year-old man to six years in prison for membership in the banned Islamic organization Hizb ut-Tahrir.

Kyrgyzstan's State Committee for National Security said on November 19 that the man was arrested in September while distributing leaflets with extremist contents.

Police report they later found literature from Hizb ut-Tahrir in his apartment.

Hizb ut-Tahrir is a London-based Sunni political organization that seeks to unite all Muslim countries into an Islamic caliphate.

The Kyrgyz government and a number of other CIS countries have banned Hizb ut-Tahrir, branding its supporters as "extremists."

Since August, several alleged members of the banned organization have been arrested in towns across Kyrgyzstan.