Southern cyclists are killed during a knife attack by the Islamic State in Tajikistan

"We had both worked in offices for most of our twenties and lived a nine to five year life that had been enjoyable but not necessarily as stimulating or rewarding as cycling"

He regularly put his blog, which his mother introduced as his passion for travel, posting tickets from Cape Town to Istanbul

Rebecca Delaney, a friend of Austin who went to school with him at Georgetown and He said that he was a revolutionary thinker who knew how to channel abstract thoughts into tangible ideas.

"He was really imaginative, he had the greatest creativity of all I've encountered said Delaney, citing both his small home and his decision to stop working for travel around the world. "He had this incredible ability to take this imagination and carry it through."

Geoghegan graduated from Georgetown in 2010, where she specialized in public administration and was minor in Spanish and Arabic. She worked in the admissions office of Georgetown after graduation, until Austin and she began their journey.

His parents, Robert and Elvira Geoghegan, said his trip was typical of his enthusiasm for the opportunities of life. In their statement, they asked for "total privacy" and asked "the space and time needed to deal with our deep loss".

Reggie Greer, who met Geoghegan when she was a sophomore student in Georgetown and that he was a junior, described her as one of the most "thoughtful" people that he knew.

"She asked us questions like," What does that mean? How do you feel? What are you thinking about right now? He recalls. "It really made us slow down, that made it unique."

A State Department spokesman condemned "the senseless attack on civilian cyclists", adding that Washington was ready to help with an international investigation into the attack.

In a nearly three-minute video broadcast by the Islamic State's news agency, five young men are sitting on top of a hill under the state flag Islamic, where they promise their loyalty, in Russian, to the leader of the caliphate Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi. They talk about their promise to slaughter the disbelievers but make no specific reference to the attack on cyclists.

Russia, which views the five predominantly Muslim states of Central Asia as its sphere of influence, has long voiced fears that Islamist terrorism could escalate and destabilize the entire region. In recent years, the Islamic State has intensified its propaganda in Russian language. Moscow maintains several military bases in the region and regularly organizes exercises to prevent terrorism.

It is not known whether the men in the video had been training abroad, in Syria or Iraq, where 1,300 Tajik fighters would have joined the Islamic State, making the country the only one in the world. 39, one of the largest foreign contributors to his fighting force.

The Interior Ministry of Tajikistan, a country whose border with Afghanistan is extremely porous, said to have killed four men suspected of being involved in the attack. Tajik officials said the brain of the attack was the Islamic Renaissance Party of Tajikistan, a peaceful opposition party whose leaders have fled the country since the ruling government banned their party. Three years ago. But, according to photos released by the Tajik Interior Ministry, the men in the video of the Islamic State are those who were killed by Tajik security forces.

Analysts and experts have seen this version of events as counterintuitive. it was an attack inspired by the Islamic State – the first ISIS attack against foreigners in the region, and it is therefore crucial that the Tajik authorities conduct their investigation in a credible, cautious and professional, "said Steve Swerdlow, researcher for Central Asia." The government's narrative accusing the IRPT of the attack simply does not fit. It is simply a shot in the foot. "

Austin and Geoghegan had planned to continue traveling – even though they had no fixed schedule for where they wanted to go. Earlier this summer, they wrote that they had plans to continue cycling "maybe another year or two or three. But only if we take advantage of it. "

Beginning to emotionally choke, Santovasco, Austin's mother, said that his son and his girlfriend were in the wrong place at the wrong time.

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