Internal Security Watch

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sarathy
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Re: Internal Security Watch

Post by sarathy »

Aarvee wrote:https://www.go4worldbusiness.com/find?s ... ers=buyers some one wants the precursor to S a r i n -g a s delivered to WB. Looks like it's from 2015 but still, sends chills down the spine. Are there other innocent uses for this stuff?
Indeed! And out there on the Net just like that (not even on one of the onion sites) :eek: . I don't see how this can be used in an "innocent" way!
Aarvee
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Re: Internal Security Watch

Post by Aarvee »

sarathy wrote: Indeed! And out there on the Net just like that (not even on one of the onion sites) :eek: . I don't see how this can be used in an "innocent" way!
Any idea where these sort of things can be reported?
kit
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Re: Internal Security Watch

Post by kit »

Aarvee wrote:https://www.go4worldbusiness.com/find?s ... ers=buyers some one wants the precursor to S a r i n -g a s delivered to WB. Looks like it's from 2015 but still, sends chills down the spine. Are there other innocent uses for this stuff?
Methylphosphonyl difluoride (DF), also known as EA-1251[2], is a chemical weapon precursor. Its chemical formula is CH3POF2. It is a Schedule 1 substance in the sense of the Chemical Weapons Convention. It is used for production of sarin and soman as a component of binary chemical weapons; an example is the M687 artillery shell, where it is used together with a mixture of isopropyl alcohol and isopropyl amine, producing sarin.

doesnt look like any civilan use to it
vsunder
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Re: Internal Security Watch

Post by vsunder »

One more Brown sahib with a "kursi" talks:

https://foreignpolicy.com/2019/04/26/in ... i-attacks/
Singha
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Re: Internal Security Watch

Post by Singha »

^^ someone should point out to his highness which units in USA can take on a mumbai style hotel attack with 1000 rooms and people armed with guns and explosives. like say a couple of large heritage hotels in NYC?

the local SWATs will rush to the location but are simply not trained to that standard ..... they will make a perimeter and wait for backup. they are too small in number anyway for such large structures.

only national level CT forces like FBI-HRT , GIGN/GIPN , GSG9 are capable of effectively dealing with such threats.

tall and tight assed london has been unable to stop a variety of attacks ranging from backpack bombs in metros to people using cars to mow pedestrians down before attacking with knives.... just saying.

we all know how Waco was handled....by the FBI national level teams no less.
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Re: Internal Security Watch

Post by mmasand »

Has anyone picked up anything on this Towheed Jammat in TN? A press article quoting an unnamed official claims that one of the bombers has visited India twice in 2017. I would've thought the NIA and IB would have picked up known associates by now.

Interestingly, Brahma Chellaney today tweeted that families of these bombers are literally let go scot free without even taking them into custody for interrogation. Remember Aleem Dar's father was justifying Pulwama to media a day after. These kids need to know there will be consequences to their families.
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Re: Internal Security Watch

Post by Supratik »

I think he said the opposite. They are being shot dead in SL which you would find difficult to do in India due to jholawalas.
mmasand
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Re: Internal Security Watch

Post by mmasand »

Supratik wrote:I think he said the opposite. They are being shot dead in SL which you would find difficult to do in India due to jholawalas.
That was my point, he said in India we give them a badge of freedom.
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Re: Internal Security Watch

Post by darshhan »

Singha wrote:^^ someone should point out to his highness which units in USA can take on a mumbai style hotel attack with 1000 rooms and people armed with guns and explosives. like say a couple of large heritage hotels in NYC?

the local SWATs will rush to the location but are simply not trained to that standard ..... they will make a perimeter and wait for backup. they are too small in number anyway for such large structures.

only national level CT forces like FBI-HRT , GIGN/GIPN , GSG9 are capable of effectively dealing with such threats.

tall and tight assed london has been unable to stop a variety of attacks ranging from backpack bombs in metros to people using cars to mow pedestrians down before attacking with knives.... just saying.

we all know how Waco was handled....by the FBI national level teams no less.
I am not very sure if even FBI HRT will be able to complete this task. In case of such an eventuality I am fairly certain that DEVGRU(seal team six)/Delta units will be called to action.
Sid
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Re: Internal Security Watch

Post by Sid »

Such attacks can only be tackled at their point of origin, or while in transit. Once these people are in the wild then it’s a lost cause. If a CT force is surprised then it’s just containment of the situation, and significant damage will occur.

With effective Intel, they could have been intercepted at their safe houses. But whatever the reason Lankans are now paying the price.

Only solution to this problem is good Intel, preemptive actions.
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Re: Internal Security Watch

Post by Singha »

an expose on how nalanda univ was run by our esteemed nobel prize winnah

https://twitter.com/bhartijainTOI/statu ... 9202752518
abhik
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Re: Internal Security Watch

Post by abhik »

What happened to all the "misguided youth" who returned to India after joining ISIS? Hope these known entities don't slip through the cracks.
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Re: Internal Security Watch

Post by chetak »

Sri Lanka suicide bombers used off-the-shelf TATP ingredients to make explosives: Returning IS fighters may use similar tactics in India, fear officials



Sri Lanka suicide bombers used off-the-shelf TATP ingredients to make explosives:

Returning IS fighters may use similar tactics in India, fear officials


Praveen Swami Apr 29, 2019

New Delhi: Easily-available chemicals, including nail-polish remover, a common disinfectant and sulfuric acid were used by Sri Lankan jihadists to manufacture the explosive used in the Easter Sunday suicide attacks which claimed over 25o lives, intelligence sources with access to forensic test results have told Firspost.

The results of the forensic tests have heightened fears among the intelligence community that Indian jihadists who fought with the Islamic State could have acquired similar skills, the sources said.

Islamic State engineers in Iraq and Syria are known to have set up industrial-scale operations to produce Triacetone Triphosphate, also known as TATP, while hundreds of cadre were given classes in manufacturing the explosive.

The National Investigation Agency (NIA) last year had said that they had recovered TATP ingredients from the home of Abdullah bin Ahmed al-Amoodi, one of the five Hyderabad residents alleged to have been preparing to bomb targets in the city. Led by preacher Mohammad Zahran Hashim, who advocated the killing of all non-Muslims and the setting up of an Islamic State in Lanka, the Sri Lanka terror cell had stockpiled chemicals at a safe-house in Wanathawilluwa, which investigators believe were meant to bomb Buddhist monuments in the city of Anuradhapura.

Sri Lanka suicide bombers used off-the-shelf TATP ingredients to make explosives:
Returning IS fighters may use similar tactics in India, fear officials. The results of the forensic tests have heightened fears among the intelligence community that Indian jihadists who fought with the Islamic State could have acquired similar skills.

Following the seizure of the supplies in a police raid early this year, though, a fresh stockpile was put together in Sainthamaruthu, near Hashim’s home-town.

Fifteen people — three women, six children, and Hashim’s father, Mohamed Hashim, and brothers Zainee Hashim, Rilwan Hashim — were killed during a police raid in Sainthamaruthu which was carried out soon after the stockpile was discovered.

Fabrication of the explosive devices, sources close to the investigation say, was carried out at Colossus Copper, a factory owned by suicide-bomber Inshaf Ibrahim. Ibrahim and his brother and fellow suicide-bomber, Ilham Ibrahim, were sons of Sri Lanka spice magnate Mohammad Yusuf Ibrahim.

Mohammed Mohiudeen, a former Sri Lankan army soldier now held by authorities, is believed to have played a key role in fabricating the explosive devices, along with a so-far-unnamed cell member who trained in Syria.

Australia and United Kingdom-educated aerospace engineer Abdul Lathief Jameel Mohamed, who blew himself up at the Tropical Inn Hotell in Dehiwela, is also believed to have provided technical knowledge for the bomb-making process.


Sri Lanka police have been conducting house-to-house searches searching for explosive material in the eastern part of the country, a Sri Lanka-based government source said. "Fisherfolk routinely use dynamite to stun fish," the official said, "there are large stockpiles in almost every village along the coast."

TATP, or C9H18O6, has been used for a string of terrorist attacks, including the 2005 suicide-bomb strikes on London’s mass transit system, and the Islamic State's 2015 strike in Paris, and its 2016 strike on Brussels.

In order to make TATP, terrorists must mix precise quantities of acetone, oxygenated water and sulphuric, hydrochloric or nitric acid together. The process yields white crystals, which are packed together with metal shrapnel for maximum lethality, and then set off with a detonator—a thin metal tube linked to two electrical wires which can cause a spark.


"There’s some risk in the process," an Indian military officer familiar with explosives said, "especially at the stage of mixing the acid with the other ingredients, which generates heat and can cause a dangerous fire."

"But once you’ve learned the art,” the officer said, “it’s just half an hour’s work.” TATP is hard to detect, dogs or electronic sniffer devices usually target nitrogen-containing explosives. The possibility of TATP being prepared on-board flights gave rise to restrictions on carrying liquids in hand luggage at airports.
Aditya_V
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Re: Internal Security Watch

Post by Aditya_V »

Naxals do a major strike, we must trace where these explosives come and take out the suppliers

https://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/ind ... 127231.cms
kit
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Re: Internal Security Watch

Post by kit »

nandakumar
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Re: Internal Security Watch

Post by nandakumar »

Aditya_V wrote:Naxals do a major strike, we must trace where these explosives come and take out the suppliers

https://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/ind ... 127231.cms
Republic TV is reporting that the company which was ambushed is the same one that killed 34 Maoists a year earlier. If so they have access to commando personnel movements on a close to real time basis. If true, that would be a serious breach of security in counter insurgency operations.
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Re: Internal Security Watch

Post by Shanmukh »

Not sure if this belongs here, but there are very serious security implications arising from this article by TrueIndology, who has narrated what has happened to him. If the mods think this belongs elsewhere, please do move it.

Basically, a suspended Babu has enough power to get Twitter to suspend a popular handle. If a suspended babu has this much power, how much more power do the backers behind him have? And how much influence is Twitter having in shaping the narrative on India? If they are so insecure that they ban a popular handle just because he is busting their myths .....

We need a JPC probe into the role played by Twitter and other social media in promotion of Hinduphobia.

https://www.mynation.com/views/true-ind ... an--pqtqwo
ramana
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Re: Internal Security Watch

Post by ramana »

.@sgurumurthy Column| Immediately after #NationalThowheedJamath was exposed as the perpetrator of terror, the Tamil Nadu Thowheed Jamath claimed it had nothing to do with its Sri Lankan cousin. A MEMRI report said the claim was false. #SriLankaTerrorAttack
https://t.co/jsRJMHhhF1
chetak
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Re: Internal Security Watch

Post by chetak »

The regular ambushes of the forces by the naxals begs the question, why is there such a monotonous failure of leadership in all such events. The IA leads from the front but something seems to be missing here if the same situations are repeated over and over again with such monotonous regularity.

How hard is it to maintain operational secrecy in all its manifestations and rigidly enforce it on a strictly need to know basis.

why are these forces when out in the field, being led by fairly junior ranks

are the naxals tracking cell phones of the forces or otherwise triangulating communication devices.

why not permanently position an isro launched satellite to track movements in very specific no go areas to provide surveillance capabilities to forewarn and hopefully forearm or use road opening teams like the IA does
Peregrine
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Internal Security Watch

Post by Peregrine »

Mods : Trust this Article is acceptable on this thread. Please transfer to appropriate Thread - Thanks in Advance

Muslim body in Kerala bans face veils in educational institutions

The circular issued by a Muslim educational society, added that heads of institutions and office-bearers of the local management must be vigilant in this regard.

A Muslim educational society in Kozhikode has banned dresses that cover the face for girls in educational institutions under its control. However, the circular issued by the body does not specifically mention burqas. The circular issued by MES state president Dr Fazal Gafoor states that the order will come into force for the 2019-2020 academic year.

The circular has also asked all heads of institutions under the MES to mention it in the calendar that it is a law governed institution. The circular cites the Kerala High Court judgement that said that the management had the fundamental right to establish and manage an educational institution.

Dr Gafoor told Times of India that the decision was not based on Sri Lanka's ban on burqas and that "MES knows what is good and bad for the community."

"MES that aims at the social and cultural progress of the Muslim community insists that the students, even while maintaining high standards in curricular and extra-curricular activities, do follow certain decorum in the dress code too. We should discourage all undesirable practices on the campuses," the April 19 circular said further adding, "Under these circumstances, dresses that are unacceptable to the mainstream society - whether they are modern or religious - cannot be promoted."

The circular added that heads of institutions and office-bearers of the local management must be vigilant in this regard.

MES, a non-governmental organisation established by Dr PA Abdul Gafoor in 1964 has 150 educational institutions under its control. Out of those institutions, 10 are professional colleges, 18 are arts and science colleges, 12 are higher secondary schools and 36 are CBSE schools.

Cheers Image
sum
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Re: Internal Security Watch

Post by sum »

^^ Most probably Dr Gafoor will have to start counting his days before a yahoo pounces on him to Qadri-fy him
ramana
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Re: Internal Security Watch

Post by ramana »

Numerous arrests and raids all over TN on PFI assets.
This is not related to SL IED attack but 5 April killing of a RSS worker.

I am thinking we need a TN thread.
Vips
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Re: Internal Security Watch

Post by Vips »

NIA carries out raids in Tamil Nadu over murder allegedly by 'radical Islamists.

NIA on Thursday carried out searches at 20 locations in Tamil Nadu in a case relating to the murder of one Ramalingam of Thanjavur, allegedly by a group of 15-16 persons subscribing to radical Islam. Some of these accused are active members and officer bearers of Popular Front of India (PFI), according to NIA.

Searches were conducted in the houses of the 10 arrested accused, six absconding accused and in four offices of PFI across Kumabkonam, Thanjavur, Trichy and Karaikal.

The recoveries include a number of digital devices including 16 mobile phones, 21 SIM cards, 3 laptops, 9 hard disks, 7 memory cards, 118 CDs/DVDs, 1 tab, 7 diaries,, 2 PFI banners and 1 DVR. Besides 1 sword, 1 sharp-edged knife and cash worth Rs 2 lakh were seized from 3 different houses, along with nearly 100 incriminating documents.

Ramalingam was murdered on February 5 this year after he objected to efforts by a local Dawah outfit to convert people in his village/town to Islam. He had encountered the group hours before he was murdered, and is alleged to have taken off skull cap from head of one of the members of the Dawah group and worn it and smeared ash on forehead of a Muslim in the group, declaring that “both now stood converted”. (Koti Koti pranam to the dharmic Indian) While the group and Ramalingam split after that and went their own ways, the radical members within the group insisted on “punishing” Ramalingam.

Later in the evening, a group of 15-16 people waylaid him as he was returning home in his mini-van and chopped off hands, using lethal weapons like billhook and knives. Though he was taken to hospital, he had lost too much blood by the time and succumbed to his injuries. Thanjavur Police had arrested 10 accused earlier. Six other accused are still absconding.

Human Rights and due process be damned, Doval needs to just raise an execution squad and kill in cold blood each and every member of this gang. Something akeen to what Isreal did after the olympic massacre. The DMK/AIADMK govt will play vote politics and the islamic murderers will get to satisfy their lust for blood of innocent Indians. Need to put the fear of god into this ass holes.
ramana
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Re: Internal Security Watch

Post by ramana »

vimal
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Re: Internal Security Watch

Post by vimal »

Vips wrote:NIA carries out raids in Tamil Nadu over murder allegedly by 'radical Islamists.

Later in the evening, a group of 15-16 people waylaid him as he was returning home in his mini-van and chopped off hands, using lethal weapons like billhook and knives. Though he was taken to hospital, he had lost too much blood by the time and succumbed to his injuries. Thanjavur Police had arrested 10 accused earlier. Six other accused are still absconding.
Take note of the headline.
NIA carries out raids in Tamil Nadu over murder allegedly by 'radical Islamists.
And then the atrocity.
Later in the evening, a group of 15-16 people waylaid him as he was returning home in his mini-van and chopped off hands, using lethal weapons like billhook and knives.
Just think what the situation was like hundreds of years ago when there was no human rights watch or law to prevent these attacks.
ramana
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Re: Internal Security Watch

Post by ramana »

X-Posting from Sri Lanka thread on Islamist terrorism in South India.

Lilo wrote:IANS reports of a terror network aimed at India created by Jihadis acting out of Paki High Commission in Colombo related to which a major terror plot targeting India was recently busted by NIA. It also details how Paki jihadis established themselves amongst SL muslims since past 14 years (post Tsunami) creating sleeper cells & fanning Islamic Jihad . This is the underlying basis for the steady flow of ISIS recruits from the Maldives,SL & to some degree TN&KL region .
The recent SL bomb blasts is a culmination of this process.
Terror Trail-I: Lashkar's grand plot in Lanka, B'desh & Maldives (IANS Exclusive)
IANS | New Delhi
Last Updated at May 7, 2019 08:15 IST

India's deep state is well versed in the art of intelligence warfare. Its human intelligence-led inputs to the Sri Lankan establishment, though unutilised, showed that they were on top of their game. India has been tracking the National Thowheed Jamaat (NTJ) for sometime now. New Delhi moved with great alacrity passing on direct actionable intelligence in the weeks and days leading up to the Easter Sunday bombings. And this happened from material accessed during interrogations of an ISIS suspect arrested in India.

The Sri Lankan government even had a warning that Catholic churches were among the possible targets. The suspect gave Indian investigators the name of a man - Zahran Hashmi - he had trained, who is associated with a Sri Lankan extremist group implicated in the bombings. The shadowy man, Zahran Hashim, was identified in a video of the purported attackers released by ISIS, which claimed responsibility for the Easter Sunday macabre massacre.

IANS met several top intelligence functionaries to piece together the emergence of Sri Lanka as the new terror central. While doing so, it unearthed a gargantuan and deep-seated Lashkar plot which goes back at least 14 years showing how LeT had invested for years in Lanka, Bangladesh, Maldives and even Malaysia as part of a larger encirclement strategy of India.

Indian intelligence has been alive to this and has used all its skill sets and ground-level inputs to mitigate the terror threat emanating from the island and other neighbouring countries. It needs to be established here that ISI C Wing and LeT are two sides of the same coin as far as jihad is concerned.

ISI has been using Idara Khidmat-e-Khalq (IKK) as a proxy to radicalise unemployed Muslim youth in Sri Lanka and coax them to join the NTJ. In parallel, India has bolstered its security apparatus in Tamil Nadu and Kerala due to the strong presence of NTJ members in these states.

The rise of IS and its vile and noxious thought process of establishing a Caliphate has found takers in Lanka, Bangladesh and the Maldives. At least 200-250 Maldivians have reportedly fought for the IS in trouble spots like Syria and these are mules who make the trek to Yemen where they are further indoctrinated and trained, then sent on wars sometimes to Mali and Chad for fighting or to the combat zone in Iraq and Syria to fight under the IS flag.

A Tokyo-based online magazine 'The Diplomat' validated this saying a December 2015 report by the Soufan Group, a private intelligence agency run by former FBI agent-turned contractor Ali Soufan, put out a count of foreign fighters who'd volunteered to fight for the Islamic State in Syria and Iraq. Four South Asian countries featured in that list - Malaysia, Pakistan, India, and the Maldives - sending an estimated 393 fighters among them. It was the island nation in the Indian Ocean that sent analysts and headlines into a tizzy with the rise of radical Islam with its bent towards Salafist tendencies. It had by far the highest per capita fighters in the sandbox.

The Indian deep state has been following Islamic militancy in Sri Lanka, a fertile breeding ground since 2004. The tipping point in the rise of Islamic fundamentalism in the emerald isle has Lashkar-e-Taiba (LeT)'s hand prints all over it. A special group headed by LeT's Muzzamil Bhat from Sialkot and his lackeys made forays into Bangladesh, the Maldives and Sri Lanka between 2005 and 2007, knowing fully well that these areas could be used to further their agenda and to encircle India.

Muzzamil Bhat is one of the planners of 26/11 and is reported to be the architect of the Chittisinghpora massacre. The entire construct of this plan to use these countries as a launchpad to train terrorists was part of his larger architecture.

The FBI in its 26/11 chargesheet named Bhat as D, a key LeT military commander, who was involved in the Chittisinghpora massacre in Jammu and Kashmir on the eve of President Bill Clinton's visit to India in March 2000.

In its second chargesheet, filed in a Chicago court, the FBI named an ISI officer, Major Iqbal, and four LeT operatives - Sajid Majeed, Abu Qahafa, Abu Alqama and the unknown Lashkar member 'D'. About 'D' the chargesheet states that after the arrest of Zaki-ur-Rehman Lakhvi in Pakistan in connection with the 26/11 attacks, he became the overall operational commander of LeT.

According to FBI, 'D', who is yet to be arrested by Pakistan, was a handler of David Coleman Headley. Headley told Indian investigators that Muzzamil was involved in the Chittisinghpora massacre. In turn, Headley also said Muzzamil was most trustworthy lieutenant of Lakhvi and apart from Chittisinghpora killings of Sikhs, he planned the Akshardham temple attack in September 2002.

According to Indian security establishment sources, Muzzamil is a Kashmiri born in 1976. He is married and his family lives in the Gujranwala town of Pakistani Punjab.

Bhat, on the other hand, is a planner and his understanding was that with Indian intelligence and security forces keeping a close vigil on southern India in those years, he reckoned that taking the training camps offshore would be a better idea. SIMI was already active in southern India, they had set up a southern chapter across the four states, while Bhatkal had become a new centrifuge.

Terror central was moving from Uttar Pradesh and Maharashtra to the southern part of India. Hence Muzzamil arrived in Sri Lanka to test the waters and quickly realised that there was traction amongst Tamil Muslims after the Tsunami, ditto in Bangladesh among the Rohingyas between 2004-2008.

But RAW which was extremely active in both Bangladesh and Sri Lanka did not allow Bhat or his henchmen to stabilise their operations.

In 2011, ably abetted and assisted by ISI officer Amir Zubair Siddiqui (Counselor in the Pakistan High Commission in Colombo), a new name popped up on the radar - Zakir Hussain - who began to actively consort with and recruit Tamil Muslims on the island. The plan was to recruit them and unleash hell on diplomatic missions in Chennai and Bangalore, but RAW once again found the scent and pursued them to cut off their feed stock of financing, explosives and weapons.

India engaged with Colombo and brought it up to speed on Siddiqui's shenanigans who was then packed off from Sri Lanka. The diplomat Amir Zubair Siddiqui's plot was to attack the US Consulate in Chennai, Israeli Consulate in Bengaluru, Eastern Naval Command HQ in Visakhapatnam and ports across the country.

Once RAW had blown his cover, NIA moved in to chargesheet Siddiqui who was then visa counselor at the Pakistan High Commission in Colombo. Siddiqui was arrested for allegedly conspiring to attack vital establishments in India and was quietly withdrawn even before the NIA's request under Mutual Assistance Legal Treaty (MLAT) reached Colombo.

The terror plot was uncovered after the NIA police personnel arrested an ISI agent Mohammed Zakir Hussain (37) through the 'Q' Branch of the Tamil Nadu police in 2013. The reason was that he was gathering details about vital installations in Tamil Nadu and sent photographs to Siddiqui. Hussain used his counterparts Sivabalan and Mohammad Salim to circulate fake currency in the state.

During questioning, Hussain also confessed that he had also used Rafeeque (29) to pump in fake Indian currency in the state.

A much larger network of Maldivians, Sri Lankan Muslims and Malaysian Tamils was discovered through this overarching probe. The hunters caught up with the quarry - Zakir Hussain - and another lynchpin was caught in Malaysia and the cartel was busted. Muzzamil Bhat was the spider who spun the web across the three countries and began the process of indoctrination in Sri Lanka. His tireless efforts paid dividends for he planted the seeds as far back as the mid 2000s. He was the first to connect the dots between Thowheed Jamaat which proselytises (mainly among the Tamil community), fights for "pure Islam" and actively promotes construction of mosques in Tamil Nadu and Sri Lankan Tamil Muslim areas.
(To be continued)
--IANS

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8F3vZkPi2Mw
ramana
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Re: Internal Security Watch

Post by ramana »

X-Posting from Sri Lanka on the Islamist terrorism in South India and the control in Pakistan.
Lilo wrote:IANS reports of a terror network aimed at India created by Jihadis acting out of Paki High Commission in Colombo related to which a major terror plot targeting India was recently busted by NIA. It also details how Paki jihadis established themselves amongst SL muslims since past 14 years (post Tsunami) creating sleeper cells & fanning Islamic Jihad . This is the underlying basis for the steady flow of ISIS recruits from the Maldives,SL & to some degree TN&KL region .
The recent SL bomb blasts is a culmination of this process.
Terror Trail-I: Lashkar's grand plot in Lanka, B'desh & Maldives (IANS Exclusive)
IANS | New Delhi
Last Updated at May 7, 2019 08:15 IST

India's deep state is well versed in the art of intelligence warfare. Its human intelligence-led inputs to the Sri Lankan establishment, though unutilised, showed that they were on top of their game. India has been tracking the National Thowheed Jamaat (NTJ) for sometime now. New Delhi moved with great alacrity passing on direct actionable intelligence in the weeks and days leading up to the Easter Sunday bombings. And this happened from material accessed during interrogations of an ISIS suspect arrested in India.

The Sri Lankan government even had a warning that Catholic churches were among the possible targets. The suspect gave Indian investigators the name of a man - Zahran Hashmi - he had trained, who is associated with a Sri Lankan extremist group implicated in the bombings. The shadowy man, Zahran Hashim, was identified in a video of the purported attackers released by ISIS, which claimed responsibility for the Easter Sunday macabre massacre.

IANS met several top intelligence functionaries to piece together the emergence of Sri Lanka as the new terror central. While doing so, it unearthed a gargantuan and deep-seated Lashkar plot which goes back at least 14 years showing how LeT had invested for years in Lanka, Bangladesh, Maldives and even Malaysia as part of a larger encirclement strategy of India.

Indian intelligence has been alive to this and has used all its skill sets and ground-level inputs to mitigate the terror threat emanating from the island and other neighbouring countries. It needs to be established here that ISI C Wing and LeT are two sides of the same coin as far as jihad is concerned.

ISI has been using Idara Khidmat-e-Khalq (IKK) as a proxy to radicalise unemployed Muslim youth in Sri Lanka and coax them to join the NTJ. In parallel, India has bolstered its security apparatus in Tamil Nadu and Kerala due to the strong presence of NTJ members in these states.

The rise of IS and its vile and noxious thought process of establishing a Caliphate has found takers in Lanka, Bangladesh and the Maldives. At least 200-250 Maldivians have reportedly fought for the IS in trouble spots like Syria and these are mules who make the trek to Yemen where they are further indoctrinated and trained, then sent on wars sometimes to Mali and Chad for fighting or to the combat zone in Iraq and Syria to fight under the IS flag.

A Tokyo-based online magazine 'The Diplomat' validated this saying a December 2015 report by the Soufan Group, a private intelligence agency run by former FBI agent-turned contractor Ali Soufan, put out a count of foreign fighters who'd volunteered to fight for the Islamic State in Syria and Iraq. Four South Asian countries featured in that list - Malaysia, Pakistan, India, and the Maldives - sending an estimated 393 fighters among them. It was the island nation in the Indian Ocean that sent analysts and headlines into a tizzy with the rise of radical Islam with its bent towards Salafist tendencies. It had by far the highest per capita fighters in the sandbox.

The Indian deep state has been following Islamic militancy in Sri Lanka, a fertile breeding ground since 2004. The tipping point in the rise of Islamic fundamentalism in the emerald isle has Lashkar-e-Taiba (LeT)'s hand prints all over it. A special group headed by LeT's Muzzamil Bhat from Sialkot and his lackeys made forays into Bangladesh, the Maldives and Sri Lanka between 2005 and 2007, knowing fully well that these areas could be used to further their agenda and to encircle India.

Muzzamil Bhat is one of the planners of 26/11 and is reported to be the architect of the Chittisinghpora massacre. The entire construct of this plan to use these countries as a launchpad to train terrorists was part of his larger architecture.

The FBI in its 26/11 chargesheet named Bhat as D, a key LeT military commander, who was involved in the Chittisinghpora massacre in Jammu and Kashmir on the eve of President Bill Clinton's visit to India in March 2000.

In its second chargesheet, filed in a Chicago court, the FBI named an ISI officer, Major Iqbal, and four LeT operatives - Sajid Majeed, Abu Qahafa, Abu Alqama and the unknown Lashkar member 'D'. About 'D' the chargesheet states that after the arrest of Zaki-ur-Rehman Lakhvi in Pakistan in connection with the 26/11 attacks, he became the overall operational commander of LeT.

According to FBI, 'D', who is yet to be arrested by Pakistan, was a handler of David Coleman Headley. Headley told Indian investigators that Muzzamil was involved in the Chittisinghpora massacre. In turn, Headley also said Muzzamil was most trustworthy lieutenant of Lakhvi and apart from Chittisinghpora killings of Sikhs, he planned the Akshardham temple attack in September 2002.

According to Indian security establishment sources, Muzzamil is a Kashmiri born in 1976. He is married and his family lives in the Gujranwala town of Pakistani Punjab.

Bhat, on the other hand, is a planner and his understanding was that with Indian intelligence and security forces keeping a close vigil on southern India in those years, he reckoned that taking the training camps offshore would be a better idea. SIMI was already active in southern India, they had set up a southern chapter across the four states, while Bhatkal had become a new centrifuge.

Terror central was moving from Uttar Pradesh and Maharashtra to the southern part of India. Hence Muzzamil arrived in Sri Lanka to test the waters and quickly realised that there was traction amongst Tamil Muslims after the Tsunami, ditto in Bangladesh among the Rohingyas between 2004-2008.

But RAW which was extremely active in both Bangladesh and Sri Lanka did not allow Bhat or his henchmen to stabilise their operations.

In 2011, ably abetted and assisted by ISI officer Amir Zubair Siddiqui (Counselor in the Pakistan High Commission in Colombo), a new name popped up on the radar - Zakir Hussain - who began to actively consort with and recruit Tamil Muslims on the island. The plan was to recruit them and unleash hell on diplomatic missions in Chennai and Bangalore, but RAW once again found the scent and pursued them to cut off their feed stock of financing, explosives and weapons.

India engaged with Colombo and brought it up to speed on Siddiqui's shenanigans who was then packed off from Sri Lanka. The diplomat Amir Zubair Siddiqui's plot was to attack the US Consulate in Chennai, Israeli Consulate in Bengaluru, Eastern Naval Command HQ in Visakhapatnam and ports across the country.

Once RAW had blown his cover, NIA moved in to chargesheet Siddiqui who was then visa counselor at the Pakistan High Commission in Colombo. Siddiqui was arrested for allegedly conspiring to attack vital establishments in India and was quietly withdrawn even before the NIA's request under Mutual Assistance Legal Treaty (MLAT) reached Colombo.

The terror plot was uncovered after the NIA police personnel arrested an ISI agent Mohammed Zakir Hussain (37) through the 'Q' Branch of the Tamil Nadu police in 2013. The reason was that he was gathering details about vital installations in Tamil Nadu and sent photographs to Siddiqui. Hussain used his counterparts Sivabalan and Mohammad Salim to circulate fake currency in the state.

During questioning, Hussain also confessed that he had also used Rafeeque (29) to pump in fake Indian currency in the state.

A much larger network of Maldivians, Sri Lankan Muslims and Malaysian Tamils was discovered through this overarching probe. The hunters caught up with the quarry - Zakir Hussain - and another lynchpin was caught in Malaysia and the cartel was busted. Muzzamil Bhat was the spider who spun the web across the three countries and began the process of indoctrination in Sri Lanka. His tireless efforts paid dividends for he planted the seeds as far back as the mid 2000s. He was the first to connect the dots between Thowheed Jamaat which proselytises (mainly among the Tamil community), fights for "pure Islam" and actively promotes construction of mosques in Tamil Nadu and Sri Lankan Tamil Muslim areas.
(To be continued)
--IANS

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8F3vZkPi2Mw
ramana
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Re: Internal Security Watch

Post by ramana »

Lilo wrote:Second part outlines in detail the terror network in South India serving the transnational Jihad and how it was unravelled & busted by the Indian anti-terror agencies.
Terror Trail-II: How south India became terror central (IANS exclusive)
IANS | New Delhi
Last Updated at May 8, 2019 08:15 IST

Even as India and its security apparatus grapple with the imponderables that emerge constantly with Pakistan's proxy war in Kashmir Valley, the death by a thousand cuts asymmetrical warfare takes its toll on our forces continuously. The rapid use of the dark web and The Onion Router (TOR which provides anonymity) to subliminally indoctrinate the youth in the Valley with a bent towards Wahhabi Salafisim is not lost on our sleuths. However, that does not for a moment mean that our deep state can take its eyes off the ball in the rest of the country.

India's vast swathe of counter-terrorism grid which combines the skills of hardcore investigation, dogged information reporting and ground level intel gathering on knowing who your adversary picks up every nano or sliver or nugget of information and processes it. Following the 3D approach of detect, deter and destroy, in the wake of 26/11, it is a much more robust network.
While RAW provides the external inputs, IB domestic, NTRO algos pick up chatter, it is the state police and its CIDs and Q Branch, say, in Tamil Nadu or Special Branch in other states who collate, disseminate and act on the information packs. In states like Maharashtra and southern states, these state police investigators are reportedly top of line and have achieved many kills and successes.

There are designated counter terrorism groups within RAW and IB and of course, there is now a full-fledged NIA which is part of a seamless information sharing and acting main frame. Ministry of Home Affairs now has a counter-terrorism and counter radicalisation division.

How and why did India manage to provide solid information leads to Sri Lanka is based on this grid and its strategic imperatives. Right from the beginning, Jamaat Inayat Ansural Momin(JIAM) has for long been active in Kerala and on the radar of India's deep state, it follows pure Lashkar-e-Taiba (LeT) ideology. Progenitor of the LeT grand plan to use the fertile breeding grounds of Sri Lanka, Bangladesh and Maldives for fresh recruits to wreak havoc on India - Muzzamil Bhat - wanted at first to use JIAM to come to Lanka and train there and return as suicide bombers to India.

In 2009, in a celebrated case, a Malyalee Muslim was found wandering around suspiciously in Kashmir till he was arrested by the security forces. Kerala has a history of communal violence, none more famous than the Marad massacre which saw the killing of eight Hindus by a Muslim mob on May 2, 2003 at the Marad beach of the Kozikhode district.

In the early evening, eight Hindus were hacked to death by a Muslim mob on the beach after reeling in their catch for the day. The killers then escaped into the local Juma Masjid, the Marad enquiry commission's (Justice Thomas P Joseph) report notes the submission of then Kozhikode Police Commissioner T.K. Vinod Kumar that hundreds of local Muslim women converged on the mosque to prevent the police from entering it to catch the attackers.

Police commissioner, T.K. Vinod Kumar stated: "It was an operation carried out by a well-knit organization. It was a quick and sudden attack which was over in 10 minutes. The attack came from a particular community. "One of the attackers, Mohammed Ashker, was also killed during the incident. The police recovered explosives and arms from the local Juma Masjid two days after the killings as well as special investigation team of the Kerala Crime Branch filed chargesheets against 147 people accused of involvement or complicity in the crime. Some suspected a JIAM hand in this.

Terror central, many reckon, was always in north India, but actually it has existed in Maharashtra and southern states for many years. Its genealogy can be traced to JIAM. Middle-eastern terror networks have been known to flirt with JIAM and that is how the Bhatkals in Karnataka emerged as a follow up to the Shahid Bilal network and dreaded Amjad LeT promoted terror cell in Hyderabad busted with his arrest in 2010.

An existential crisis gripped Bhatkal in Karnataka with the rise of Mohammed Ahmed Zarar Siddibapa who became a poster boy of indigenous terror as the dangerous and deadly Indian Mujahideen terrorist Yasin Bhatkal. What did not help the town in coastal Uttara Kannada district was that other IM top guns, brothers Riyaz and Iqbal Shabantri, also became branded as Riyaz and Iqbal Bhatkal.

The town was subsumed by their identity. Its genesis can be traced to a clash in 1991 during the Lok Sabha polls followed by communal clashes which erupted in 1993. A police officer who did not want to be named said, "The town remained tense for nearly six months, during which 17 people were killed, three were reported missing and property worth Rs 12 crore was destroyed." Tension rose alarmingly in April 1996 after the then local MLA Dr U Chittaranjan was murdered, leading to a police crackdown.

Investigators now claim that birthed seven years later was Yasin Bhatkal along with six other young men who sat together in the town and decided to form the Indian Mujahideen. Muslims in Bhatkal are primarily known to be either Nawayaths or Dahknis. The Nawayaths trace their origins to Arab countries and believe their ancestors came to the seashore town in the 8th century.

The Dakhnis are referred to as original inhabitants. IM became a terror power house -- in signature moves it planted bombs all over the country leaving behind a trail of blood. It was only the combined operation of RAW under Alok Joshi and IB under Syed Asif Ibrahim that Yasin Bhatkal was captured after a stakeout in Nepal in August 2013 since when he remains incarcerated.

This is one of the biggest wins of Indian intelligence which helped dismantle the IM network which killed hundreds in different locations in India.

In early 2010, captured Lashkar-e-Tayiba operative T Naseer reportedly told his Kerala police interrogators that Hyderabad was Pakistani-based LeT's Indian headquarters and the epicentre of all anti-national activities. Information provided by security agencies revealed that Hyderabad had the most number of alleged terror operatives who had gone missing or are currently believed to be residents in Pakistan.

Mohammed Shahid Bilal, the alleged mastermind in the August 2007 twin blasts in the city and the Mecca Masjid blasts in May that year, who is said to have been killed in an encounter in Pakistan, continues to remain a hero in the area where he lived. A youth from his area, who preferred not to be identified for this report, says, "Saab jab tak Bilal tha, paani or current ka problem nahin tha (when Bilal was alive, we did not have water or power problems)."

In 2002 the Lashkar decided to get aggressive. In October 2002, 14 men were sent to Pakistan for training. Various reasons like the liberation of Hyderabad and the demolition of the Babri Masjid were given to brainwash these men. In 2007, when the Lashkar gave a call for jihad, the likes of Bilal and Rehman Khan became full-fledged terror operatives. They were among the 14 men who had been sent to Pakistan and told to set up Lashkar networks in the city.

At the time, during a meeting of FBI agents and Indian security officials, it emerged that 21 terrorists operating in Pakistan, including Abu Jundal, had Hyderabad origins. Hyderabad, the IB sources say, has surpassed Azamgarh in Uttar Pradesh and Kerala as a breeding ground for Indian terrorists. Intelligence Bureau sources say Bilal was gunned down in Karachi, Pakistan, on August 30, 2007, along with his brother Samad.

But the story of south India as epicentre - terror remains incomplete without mention of Mohd. Amjad, the HuJI boss who completed the triad along with Yasin Bhatkal and Shahid Bilal. Arguably one of the most dangerous, in January 2010, days ahead of Republic Day, Mohammed Amjad alias Khaja, the south India chief of terror outfit HuJI who was tasked by ISI to carry out some attacks was arrested by Hyderabad police.

Twentyseven year-old Khaja, a native of Malakpet, had close links with Jaish and Lashkar. Jamestown Foundation (a Washington-based institute which educates policy makers about events and trends, which it regards as being of current strategic importance to the United States) writes that IB officials achieved a breakthrough on January 17 when they arrested a self-styled HuJI commander identified as Mohammad Abdul Khwaja (a.k.a. Amjad) from Chennai.

The 27-year-old native of Andhra Pradesh had intended to strike major installations in South India during the forthcoming Republic Day (January 26) celebrations. According to his confessional statements, he planned to target the Indian Oil Corporation (IOC) depot on the outskirts of Hyderabad city as well as refineries in Visakhapatnam and Chennai. Besides these installations, he also plotted to carry out assassinations in Hyderabad, mostly targeting police officers involved in terror investigations.

For these activities, Khwaja scouted at least 25 other Muslim youths from south India and reportedly sent them for terror training in Pakistan. The most disturbing aspect of Khwaja's activities was the transnational linkages he had established over the years. Khwaja was found to be operating in and out of India, Sri Lanka and Bangladesh in the past few years, coordinating with the LeT, Jaish-e Muhammed (JeM) and IM leadership and establishing close ties with IM's elusive mastermind, Riaz Bhatkal (a.k.a. Ismail Shahbandri).

Khwaja, who had worked closely with HuJi's slain operative Shahid Bilal and underwent terrorist training in Pakistan, was found to be using three passports - Indian, Bangladeshi and Pakistani - in three different names.

Neutralising this trinity meant that the terror network in south India was well on its way to walking the road to peridition.

(To be continued)

--IANS

prs/

(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)

ramana
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Re: Internal Security Watch

Post by ramana »

One thing I don't understand is this Abu Jundal was also involved in the 26/11 attack and was supposed to be in the Karachi Control room.
This guy's name was Syed Zabiuddin and another names Zabiuddin Ansari and Riyasat Ali.
He was deported by KSA.

viewtopic.php?p=2202387#p2202387

The original report said Abu Jindal was born in Beed, Maharashtra.
This new article says he is from Hyderabad.
Most likely the fellow identifies with Nizam's kingdom.
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Re: Internal Security Watch

Post by SSridhar »

The following is about Indian Mujahideen (IM).

IM cadres subscribe to Dar-ul-Uloom Deoband (Deobandi school) largely and some also to ideology of Mawlana Abu-ala-al-Mawdudi.

IM’s precursors are generally considered to be Asif Reza Commando Force (ARCF) and Students’ Islamic Movement of India (SIMI). One of the top arrested SIMI leaders, Abdus Subhan Qureshi (see later for more details), has revealed to the National Investigation Agency about the change of SIMI to SIM (after the banning of SIMI) and then further into IM. SIMI became SIM in October 2007 when Shahbaz Hindi was declared the chief of SIM.

According to SATP (South Asia Terrorism Portal), the much smaller ARCF was raised by illegal Bangladeshi immigrants near Habibpur, along the Indo-Bangladesh border in the Malda district of West Bengal in December, 2001 (more details later). It was affiliated to Harkat-ul-Jihadi-Islami, Bangladesh (HuJI-B), which in turn is linked to Pakistan’s ISI. The other jihadi terrorist organization that played a role in IM is Tanzim Islahul Muslimeen (TIM or Organization for the Improvement of Muslims) which was founded by Jalees Ansari, Azam Ghouri, and Abdul Karim ‘Tunda’. They were guided by LeT’s Azeem Cheema who had been sent to India for that purpose. By 1994, Ansari had been arrested while Ghouri and Tunda had escaped to Pakistan and Bangladesh respectively and joined LeT there, facilitating jihadi training for TIM cadres from India. By the 1996-1998 timeframe, Ghouri & Tunda returned to India and founded IM in Hyderabad. In c. 2000, Ghouri was killed by the Gujarat police and Tunda escaped to Pakistan via Bangladesh. Tunda was arrested by the Indian police in April 2013 from along the India-Nepal border.

IM was raised by the ISI as part of its ‘Project Karachi’ which was the third phase of terrorism unleashed by Pakistan on India. The IM announced its presence to the public through media in 2007, as an indigenous Islamist militant force, which emphasized on getting its cadre from local Muslim population. This was a smart move by the ISI to have plausible deniability. The government banned Indian Mujahideen, after declaring it a terrorist organisation in June 2010. The first phase was terror that involved funding and manpower entirely from Pakistan; the second phase involved some Indian manpower that was trained in Pakistan; the third phase involves entirely Indian manpower under the control of the ISI to take the ‘plausible deniability’ to the next level whereby it would be shown that terrorism was purely home-grown. ‘Project Karachi’ was formulated after 9/11 when it became difficult for Pakistan to freely indulge in terror across its eastern borders with the presence of the US forces in Afghanistan and any escalation by India would become difficult for Pakistan vis-à-vis its benefactor, the US which was generously supporting it with arms and funds.

SIMI was founded in Aligarh Muslim University (AMU) in 1977 as the student wing of Jama’at-i-Islami Hind (JI). It believed in Maulana Mawdudi’s ideas that the capture of political power is the main point of the struggle in the Islamic Mission. According to SIMI, ‘nationalism’ is un-Islamic in nature. It does not believe in state boundaries and thinks that Muslims are meant to be part of one nation, Qaum, Millat. SIMI has no hesitation about waging a violent Jihad for the establishment of a khalifat. Hence its slogan: Allah is our Lord, Mohammad (peace be upon him) is our Commander, The Qur’an is our Constitution. SIMI as an organisation was proscribed in 2001 by the Indian Government on charges of sedition, creating hatred, engineering communal violence, etc. It was suspected to be involved in the Sabarmati Express blast in August 2000, and in the serial blast in Coimbatore, Tamil Nadu, on February 14, 1998. SIMI’s Chief, Safdar Nagori, who was sentenced to life imprisonment on Feb. 27, 2017 by a CBI Court in Indore, headed the hardline faction within SIMI. This faction also had links with Popular Front of India (PFI) in Kerala as well as Karnataka Forum for Dignity. This faction eventually merged with IM. The PFI has a students wing, called Campus Front which murdered an SFI student in Kerala in early July 2018. Some of these Keralite SIMI followers founded National Dvelopment Front (NDF) in c. 1993. Prominent among its founder-leaders was P. Koya, who was a senior SIMI leader. The Popular Front of India (PFI) was launched in 2006 as a successor to the NDF, which merged itself with organisations which claimed to espouse the cause of the oppressed sections, such as the Karnataka Forum for Dignity and Manitha Neethi Pasarai of Tamilnadu. They claim to stand for the backward sections of society, such as minorities and Dalits, and were in the forefront of the nationwide protests after the suicide of Rohit Vemula. Political observers point out that by doing so they are attempting to make inroads into the student community by highlighting a clutch of socio-political problems ignored by mainstream student bodies.

Riyaz Shahbandri (hereafter known by his alias Riyaz Bhatkal) and Mohammed Sadique Israr Sheikh (hereafter Sadique Sheikh) were the most prominent among this hardline faction. In the meanwhile, two inmates of Tihar jail, Aftab Ansari and Asif Raza Khan, had been brainwashed by Ahmed Omar Saeed Sheikh (a British-Pakistani and a follower of JeM’s Masood Azhar, also involved in Daniel Pearl murder and who had been arrested by Indian police and subsequently released in exchange in c. 1999 for the hijacked passengers of IC-814) while being jail mates and joined SIMI after release. They all went to Pakistan for training in c. 2000. Asif Raza Khan was killed by Gujarat Police in 2001. After the Gujarat police gunned down Asif Raza Khan, his brother Amir Raza Khan (A.R. Khan) established the Asif Raza Commando Force (ARCF) in his brother’s name. After conducting that attack on the American Consulate in Kolkatta in c. 2002, Amir Raza Khan fled to Pakistan.

IM was secretively formed by the Bhatkal brothers in Bhatkal in c. 2004 (the Bhatkal module) but IM was publicly announced in c. 2007 when it began to take responsibility for bomb attacks. In the meanwhile, Sadique Sheikh had formed the Azamgarh Module. The Bhatkal Module (later became the Pune Module) was active in the South and the Azamgarh (and Saharanpur) Module in the North.

Explosives were supplied to them by HUJI-B. Their first attack was on Dasashwadmedha Ghat in Varanasi on February 23, 2005. Sayed Zabiud- din Ansari (aka Abu Jundal), the Indian who taught Hindi to the 2008 Mumbai attackers and was in the control room for the operation is an IM operative. The 2006 Mumbai blasts, the 2007 twin Hyderabad bombings (Gokul Chat & Lumbini Park) and the 2008 Bengaluru blast were conducted by IM. These were falsely attributed to LeT & HuJI-B. In September 2018, two IM operatives were sentenced to death by a Hyderabad Court for the 2007 twin Hyderabad bombings. Three other accused — Riyaz Bhatkal, Iqbal Bhatkal and Amir Reza Khan — are absconding in Pakistan.

The Batala House encounter in New Delhi in c. 2008 eliminated two IM terrorists (Atif Ameen & Mohd. Sajeed) and information found there led to the arrest of Sadique Sheikh. This led to the disarray of IM. It was at this time that another Bhatkali, Mohammed Ahmed Siddi Bapa (also known as Yasin Bhatkal), took control of IM (was eventually arrested in c. 2013). The IM took two years to recoup and the three simultaneous blasts in Mumbai in July 2011 was headed by Riyaz Bhatkal remotely from Saudi Arabia using a Pakistani LeT operative, Waqas, and Ahmed Siddi Bapa. Yasin Bhatkal was arrested by the Indian police at Nepal border 28 August 2013. Charges were framed against him on April 29, 2019 for his involvement in the Koregaon German Bakery bomb blast in Pune in c. 2010 that left 17 persons dead and injured more than 50.

In January 2018, a co-founder of IM, Abdul Subhan Qureshi, aka Tauqeer and as India’s Osama bin Laden, was arrested from Ghazipur on Jan. 22, 2018. He was a computer engineer from Rampur, Madhya Pradesh. He had moved to Nepal and from there to Saudi Arabia and returned in c. 2017 to revive SIMI. Qureshi is the suspected signatory of IM threat letters and e-mails and was the planner for the 2008 Gujarat serial bomb blasts which claimed over 50 lives. The police, who called him a ‘Phantom’ of SIMI and IM, said that after SIMI was banned in September 2001, he moved his base to Karnataka where he allegedly met the Bhatkal brothers and later founded the Indian Mujahideen. After graduating in 1995, he bagged a private job in Fort Mumbai. But around 1994, he is suspected to have started attending SIMI meetings. According to an NIA chargesheet filed in 2011, Qureshi and 29 other alleged SIMI activists were accused of organising a secret training camp in Wagamon of Kerala in December 2007 for three days, where they allegedly taught firing and making of petrol bombs and conducted classes on “Jihad In India”. The police said that after the arrest of SIMI chief Safdar Nagori in 2008, Qureshi took the lead and plotted the 2008 Gujarat blasts which left 57 dead and several injured. His involvement is suspected in the 2007 Mumbai train blasts. After 2008, Qureshi allegedly moved to Nepal via Ranchi and Raxaul where he was living till 2015 in the guise of an English teacher at a private school. In February 2015, he allegedly went to Saudi Arabia and met Bhatkal to discuss their plans. “In Saudi Arabia, he worked as a salesman as a cover and met several SIMI and IM sympathisers”.

A few weeks after the arrest of Quereshi, the Delhi Police arrested another top Indian Mujahideen militant Ariz Khan, aka Junaid, from Nepal on February 13, 2018. Khan was an expert bomb-maker, a core member of the Azamgarh-module of the IM and was involved in several bomb-blasts including the 13 September, 2008, serial blasts in Delhi which killed 30 people. Khan carried a bounty of Rs 15 lakh on his head. Khan was one of the militants who escaped from Delhi's Batla House, where an encounter on 19 September, 2008, killed two Indian Mujahideen terrorists. Later he fled to Nepal and lived with Qureshi before moving to Saudi Arabia.

The following is a partial list of IM orchestrated bomb blasts:

1. Mumbai blasts, 2006
2. Twin bombings Hyderabad & Uttar Pradesh, 2007
3. Serial blasts in Bengaluru, Delhi & Ahmedabad, 2008
4. German Bakery Bombing, Pune and Sheetla Ghat Bombing, Varanasi, 2010
5. Three simultaneous bombings, 2011
6. Serial blasts, Pune and Hyderabad, 2012
7. Bodh Gaya blasts, 2013 (On March 25, 2018, a special NIA court convicted 5 IM terrorists in this case)
Sachin
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Re: Internal Security Watch

Post by Sachin »

One more Kerala youth held for IS links
This chap was deported from Qatar and then detained by the NIA.

Information about IS attacks given months back but state police ignored: NIA.
Can't blame the K.P because they were out in full force at Sabari Mala and else where detaining any one who dared to say Swamy Sharanam :roll:. The Chief Minister of the state is on a European tour at the moment, with his family and even grand children. Is said to be studying flood relief measures undertaken in European countries. The cheap mentality - i.e misusing tax payer money for joy rides, when there is a chance - is mind boggling. The pettyness/cheapness as they say is not in the pocket, but in a person's mind.
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Re: Internal Security Watch

Post by Lilo »

x-post
Terror Trail-III: The missing pieces of Kerala & Bangladesh -IANS
The LeT along with Jaish-e-Mohommad are the two principals in the proxy war against India, both have skin in the terror game and in many ways are the mirror image of ISI C Wing.
IANS|May 09, 2019, 10.42


NEW DELHI: The bulwark of Lashkar-e-Tayiba's ideology is to use political Islam as the tip of the spear in its hatred for India. Using Islamic fundamentalism as the instrumentality to lure disaffected educated and uneducated youth in jihad against India, LeT has spread its wings in Bangladesh, Sri Lanka, the Maldives and as far away as Malaysia.

The LeT along with Jaish-e-Mohommad are the two principals in the proxy war against India, both have skin in the terror game and in many ways are the mirror image of ISI C Wing which runs, controls and minds the military-jihad complex in Pakistan.

The Lashkar, however, gets precedence as it is led with ruthlessness by a man who has a $10 million bounty on his head -- Hafiz Mohd. Saeed -- in the overarching hierarchical matrix. As co-founder and chief of the Jamaat-ud-Dawah, he is followed by Zakiur Reham Lakhvi (supreme commander of operations in Kashmir and a key member of LeT's General Council), Azeem Cheema (training camps are supervised by Professor Azeem Cheema alias Babu, who used to be a teacher of Islamic studies at a government degree college in Faisalabad.

He is the same Azeem Cheema whom the Mumbai police chief identified as the person who trained Pakistan militants accused of triggering the Mumbai blasts) and Abdul Rehman Makki (second-in-command of Jamaat-ud-Dawah, a Pakistani Islamic welfare organization of Ahl-e-Hadith and the political arm of the UN-designated terrorist organization Lashkar-e-Taiba).

In this mix can be added the shadowy figure of Muzzamil Bhat; architect of the India encirclement strategy and taking the war against India offshore to neighbouring countries.

'Washington Post' in the immediate aftermath of the Easter Sunday bombings stated India, despite having the second-largest population of Muslims in the world, has seen only around 100 citizens fall for the magnetism of the Caliphate to fight alongside their Muslim brethren. But this is fewer than the number of such recruits from the Netherlands.

"Yet there are regions where the Islamic State has managed to draw adherents, including in the northern part of Kerala. The state has the highest literacy rates and development indicators in the country, as well as deep historical ties to the Middle East through migration and trade. In 2016, a group of five families left Kerala hoping to reach Islamic State territory via Afghanistan.

"By the time their relatives realized they were missing, five families - some with small children - had left their comfortable bungalows and jobs as doctors and businessmen to make the perilous journey to Islamic State-held territory in Afghanistan. Authorities believe that 19 adults and three children are settled in Nangahar province, on the mountainous border with Pakistan. Their departure raised alarms about the Islamic State's reach in India as well as growing extremism in Kerala, a southern state with deep ties through migrant workers to the Persian Gulf.

"Two of the Keralites were killed by drones in Nangahar, including one on April 11 that year, family members said. Then, on April 13, US forces dropped a Massive Ordnance Air Blast bomb on a cave complex where militant commanders were believed to be hiding."

An estimated 100 Indians have left to fight for the Islamic State in Syria, Iraq and elsewhere, according to Ajai Sahni, executive director of the Institute for Conflict Management in New Delhi - a fraction of the number of foreign fighters who have taken up the cause in the past two years.

Over 20 Muslim youngsters have reportedly disappeared from Kerala and out of these, at least 11 were believed to have reached the IS terror camps in Syria. Firoz Khan, a 24-year-old from Trikaripur in Kerala's Kasargod district, was arrested by IB from Mumbai. He was nabbed from a hotel in Dongri in Mumbai. Firoz had left for Mumbai on June 22 on the pretext of going to Kerala's Kozhikode city. A phone call Firoz made to inform his family about his whereabouts is what trapped him. During the call, he said some others who went missing from his village have reached IS camps in Syria, stated a Manorama report.

The Middle East Institute writes: IS' main recruiter, Shafi Armar, who, based in Bhatkal, was believed to be operating in Syria, has been responsible for officially forming two major cells: the Janood-ul-Khalifa-e-Hind and Ansar ut-Tawhid fi Bilad al-Hind. However, over the past five years, these groups have not gained the traction they expected and have struggled to carry out any attack.

Simultaneously, IS only did marginally better in attracting Indians to its heartlands in Iraq, Syria, and Afghanistan as mentioned earlier.

The danger though is clear and present. Our vigil and guard cannot be lowered in this 24x7 war against terror. Nevertheless, over the past year, the Islamic State has seemingly tried to expand its presence. The January 2019 and December 2018 plots were not the only evidence of their activities. In September 2018, probe agencies disrupted another plot to break a top IS operative out of a jail in Tamil Nadu.

Moreover, in October 2018 Kerala police discovered that ten individuals had joined IS in Afghanistan. This is in addition to IS' persistent presence in Kashmir, where most recently, the mounted at least ten operations that produced 22 casualties. Furthermore, in the new issue of IS' magazine, Al Risalah, the group dedicated a few articles to political issues taking place in Kashmir.

Maintaining excellent ties with Bangladesh PM Sheikh Hasina has meant that India has the intelligence edge in our eastern neighbourhood where the leader herself brooks no nonsense from terror outfits.

While the tony Holey Artisan Bakery attack by educated Bangladeshi youth exposed the underbelly, Sheikh Hasina's response was brutal. Jamaat Mujhaidheen terrorists were hunted down and retribution completed.

The United States says that a faction of the Jamaat-ul Mujahideen Bangladesh (JMB) serves as the local branch of the Islamic State. It has designated the group as a terrorist organisation. "They talk like ISIS and behave like ISIS," said Tasneem Khalil, a Bangladeshi journalist who lives in Sweden and tracks militant groups.

Meanwhile, Islamic State propaganda channels targeting Bengali speakers - operating primarily on the messaging app Telegram - have become active again after a lull last year, he said. "Obviously they are regrouping and trying to excite their base."

The centrifuge in this is Major General Tarique Ahmed Siddique, Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina's security adviser who has effective control over the country's armed forces and intelligence agencies. General Siddique is considered one of the most influential members of Sheikh Hasina's Awami League government and a very close personal ally; his brother is married to the Prime Minister's sister, Sheikh Rehana.

His niece is the UK Labour member of parliament, Tulip Siddique.

The seeds of Islamic militancy were sown by LeT's Muzzamil Bhat who used the HuJI, Bangladesh as a beach head, as it combined with the Jamaat to make inroads. In fact, very soon the LeT subsumed HuJI and even elements of Jamaat and became all pervasive as the paragon of Islamist ideology.

Harkat-ul-Jihad-al-Islami, Bangladesh is the Bangladeshi branch of the terrorist group Harkat-ul-Jihad-al-Islami (HuJI). It is banned in Bangladesh. The founder of the group was Maulana Abdus Salam. Other well-known leaders include Shaikhul Hadith Allama and Azizul Haque, who was the chairman of the political party Islami Okiya Jote.

Muhammad Habibur Rahman (alias Bulbuli Huzur) was a leader of the HuJI and initially a leader of Bangladesh Khelafat Majlish. The principal of Lalkhan Madrasa in Chittagong, Mufti Izharul Islam Chowdhury, was also a leader of the HuJI. Mufti Abdul Hanan is the current leader of the Bangladeshi branch of the HuJI. He is currently incarcerated, convicted of various terrorism charges and has been sentenced to death. He is charged in 25 criminal cases involving terrorism.

The Islami Chhatra Shibir or Shibir (student's wing of Jamaat-e-Islami) also began to owe allegiance to LeT. Its objectives are to struggle for changing the existing system of education on the basis of Islamic values, to inspire students to acquire Islamic knowledge and to prepare them to take part in the struggle for establishing Islamic way of life.

A significant aim of the outfit is to establish an Afghanistan-Taliban type Islamist regime in Bangladesh. Consequently, the outfit is opposed to forces of modernization, secularism and democracy. The ICS is one of the strongest student fronts in the universities of Chittagong, Dhaka, Rajshahi and Jahangirnagar.

It is also emerging as a dominant group in the Khulna and Sylhet universities. Within the vast madrassa (religious seminary) structure in Bangladesh, the ICS is reported to be a dominant and uncontested organisation.

The Indian deep state has understood the enemy outside Kashmir Valley and busted all the terror modules within the country and through active information sharing with neighbouring nations, plugged and played into the Islamist network in these countries.

Sheikh Hasina government's "zero-tolerance" policy is to counter violent extremism. She has also positioned the Awami League as a secular nationalist party, emphasising its prosecution and execution of hardline Jamaat-e-Islami leaders who were found guilty of war crimes during the Liberation war in 1971.

According to a US State Department's Country Report on Terrorism, 2017, since Gulshan's Holey Artisan attack, at least 79 suspected radicals have been killed and more than 150 others arrested in an aggressive anti-militancy crackdown. To support counter-terrorism, the Bangladesh government also enacted the country's first anti-terrorism law in 2009, which was amended in 2013.

Pakistan and its jihadi arms haven't given up on bringing her down. A sensational plot to assassinate Sheikh Hasina and her family members besides top leaders of the ruling Awami League ahead December 30, 2018 parliamentary polls was foiled. Lt. General Navid Moktar from ISI was believed to have played a pivotal role in the plot, where several ISI agents apart from some members of the Bangladesh Navy and Coast Guard were involved.

ISI and LeT, in many ways have tried to facilitate the return of pro-Pakistan BNP and radical Jamaat-e-Islami to power, but unsuccessfully and this is a tribute to Indian agencies liaising with Dhaka effectively.

One of the biggest breakthroughs in this war against subterranean terror came in 2009 in south Asia and in the main Bangladesh. In a big catch, intelligence sleuths captured Mohd Omar Madani, his links to the 26/11 Mumbai attacks and also other terror strikes in the country proved to be a treasure trove of valuable information.

Perhaps the most important bit was his handling and knowledge of Bangladesh as conduit for Lashkar operatives. This was used with deadly impact over the next few years by RAW which communicated the coordinates of the entire cell and its managers to Dhaka.

Delhi police and the Intelligence Bureau grilled Madani after he revealed that he had links with Lashkar-e-Tayiba chief Hafiz Saeed, Abu Hamza, Sabahuddin and Fahim Ansari all of whom have were involved in the Mumbai attacks.

Madani has also told the police that he had states like Karnataka and Kerala on his radar and the Lashkar had plans to carry out deadly strikes in these states. He was a crucial piece in the jigsaw, for the probe and questioning revealed Madani was responsible for making Bangladesh a transit point for the Lashkar cadres waiting to cross over into India.

Police sources said he was in constant touch with Saeed and Zaki-ur-Rehman Lakhvi regarding recruitment in India. Madani was specifically directed to look for youth in the metros and coastal areas.
Lilo
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Terror Trail-IV: How India buried the domestic terror time capsule (IANS Exclusive)
IANS | New Delhi
Last Updated at May 10, 2019 08:11 IST


When there is only one bullet in the chamber, you don't want to expend it needlessly, you want to ensure that you claim a victim with it. Indian deep state has been behind the eight ball for a long time in quelling terror, but 26/11 metamorphosed it and since then it has strong-armed the terror modules in a stone cold manner, enjoying win after win as documented by the earlier three parts of this series. Barring Kashmir Valley, where it continues to grapple with local and proxy fidayeen and mujhaidheen, it has pretty much bottled up the terror genie in the rest of the country and impressively enough made gains across the immediate neighbourhood.

Intelligence bloodhounds have busted linkages between Pakistan and Sri Lanka, Pakistan and southern India and Pakistan and Bangladesh. All the zealots have been buried in time capsules, hopefully never to return. The challenge, however, remains because the danger is clear and present.

Attempts at mainstreaming Kashmiri militancy and thought process to the national consciousness have been made sporadically and sometimes successfully, but agencies have been alive to them. The one thing that Indian deep state is fully aware of is that Pakistan will remain Janus faced and duplicitous and never ever to be trusted.

So while they display a sense of victimhood over domestic terror, the reality the world has come to realise that this narrative is a chimera. As a haven for alleged non-state actors fully backed by the military-ISI-jihadi establishment, Pakistan simply is a toxic and rogue state. Elements nurtured and supported by the ISI C Wing-jihad complex now have a free run within and outside Pakistan.

In many ways the Frankenstein that they created has come back to haunt them like Banquo's ghost did to Macbeth in the Bard's much acclaimed theatrical gargantuan. By creating Lashkar-e-Jhangvi (LeJ) and Tehrik e Taliban Pakistan (TTP) and unleashing them to foment terror in FATA since 2007, what started out was as a B Team for the Afghan Taliban has pushed pure political Islam theology and ideology across Pakistan.

The LeJ has claimed responsibility for various mass-casualty attacks against the Shias in Pakistan, including multiple bombings that killed over 200 Hazara Shias in Quetta in 2013. It has also been linked to the Mominpura graveyard attack in 1998, the dramatic abduction and slaying of Daniel Pearl in 2002, and the spectacular attack on the Sri Lanka cricket team in Lahore in 2009 using the now signature buddy-pairs attack teams.

Playing victim, Pakistan's polity has portrayed the LeJ as one of the country's most virulent terror outfits. Tehrik-i-Taliban, alternatively referred to as the Taliban, is a radical extremist armed group which is an umbrella organisation of various militant groups based on Afghan side of the Durand line. Most Taliban groups in Pakistan coalesce under the TTP.

....

The military, the sources said, had also taken physical control of the three passes from Afghanistan into Tirah - Mzatal, Kandao Gharibi and Dramudrad situated at 7,300 to 9,300 feet altitude above the sea level. Two of the passes have been physically taken over by the military, while the third is under direct fire power, thus putting an end to any movement through that pass.

But the success did not come easily. The military lost more than 50 men, including officers, in the second phase of Operation Khyber, while another 100 or so were wounded. While the Pakistan Army has been raining hell on the TTK and LeJ to rein them with successive operations, it is impossible to have a cogent counter-insurgency doctrine in a nation where jihad has become a way of life.

India has to remain vigilant at all times. Zarb-e-Azb was followed by Operation Radd-ul-Fassad which began in February 2017, following a resurgence in terrorist incidents. The operation entailed the conduct of Broad Spectrum Security (Counter Terrorism) operations by Rangers in Punjab, continuation of ongoing operations across the country and focus on more effective border security management.

Countrywide disarmament and explosive control were also given as additional objectives of the operation. The National Action Plan was pursued as the hallmark of this operation. Further, given the nature of the beast unleashed against India and the brutalised psyche of Pakistan which wants revenge for the vivisection of Pakistan in 1971, the Kashmir pot will continue to be stirred. India cannot sit on its haunches, it has to be watchful at all times.

Indian deep state is now priding itself for its human intelligence across the country and immediate neighbourhood. In fact such is its efficacy that in 2014, a group of Sikh extremists who were undergoing training in Thailand under the aegis of LeT at a Rohingyas camp were shut down by a Thai counter-terrorism team with inputs from New Delhi.

Close cooperation and information sharing with several countries is resulting in these wins. The swoopdown by the Thais at the Rohingya camp led to arrest of Jagtar Singh Tara and Harminder Singh Mintoo. Last year, Tara, who is undergoing life imprisonment till death for the assassination of former Punjab chief minister Beant Singh, expressed threat for his life in Burail jail, Chandigarh. Tara said this while expressing doubt over the death of Khalistan Liberation Force chief Harminder Singh Mintoo who died of cardiac arrest in Patiala Central Jail. Three others had been sent back by the Thais, including Bathinda resident Ramandeep Singh, alias Sunny, who was arrested in November 2014 with a handmade bomb and explosives.

Ramandeep was allegedly provided training by Pakistan's Inter Services Intelligence in Bangkok and Malaysia as he was in touch with Tara who was absconding at that time and was arrested later. Authorities in Thailand arrested Babbar Khalsa International (BKI) militant, Gurmeet Singh alias Jagtar Singh Tara, convicted for his involvement in the 1995 assassination of former Punjab Chief Minister Beant Singh.

Tara, who escaped from Chandigarh's Burail Jail, entered Thailand in October 2014 and was arrested in the eastern province of Chonburi at a Rohingya camp. The tip-off came from Punjab intelligence which reported ISI-trained Khalistani terrorists in Thailand (2014) were planning to launch strikes in India.

One of the things that PM Modi doesn't get adequate credit for the Indian diplomatic encirclement of Pakistan by cutting off the intellectual and monetary feed stock from Saudi Arabia, Abu Dhabi, Dubai and even Qatar.

The PM in conjunction with National Security Advisor Ajit Doval and the Ministry of External Affairs has systematically suffocated Pakistan by cutting the umbilical cord from its erstwhile theological supporters and purveyors of Wahhabi Salafisim. The inputs are coming from these areas because the Crown Princes Mohd bin Salman, Mohd bin Zayed Al Nahyan and Mohd bin Rashid Al Maktoum enjoy an excellent relationship and rapport with PM Modi.

(To be continued)

--IANS
Lilo
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Re: Internal Security Watch

Post by Lilo »

Concluding part.
Terror Trail-V: The politics of abduction in Kashmir (IANS Exclusive)
IANS | New Delhi
Last Updated at May 11, 2019 08:11 IST


Considering the threat percept to India's crown jewel - Jammu & Kashmir - India's deep state knows its intensity and while it has developed responses, how does one deal with a fidayeen who is ready to die? State-sponsored terror now dovetailed with rising levels of local militancy are taking their toll on Indian security forces, asymmetrical warfare bleeding us through the famed military doctrine of death by a thousand cuts stratagem.

While this may have paid handsome dividends to ISI C Wing and the Jihadi complex that it nurtures, Kashmir Valley was thrown into chaos with a different tactic in the winter of 1989. The template was abduction and it paid handsome dividends.
Terroism/militancy/extremism was birthed out of this strategy.
Since then the game plan has been changed repeatedly with great felicity and precision. The play list has seen many signature moves like the round of ethnic cleansing where well-known Kashmiri Pandits were systematically gunned down as ethnocentrism came centre-stage in Kashmir. For brutalising the psyche of the minority Hindu community to stampede them out of their home and hearth in the Valley, instilling the fear factor through a combination of kidnappings and race extermination -- the power of the gun was unleashed.

The bleed India strategy has been predicated on keeping the pot boiling as nearly 700,000 Indian troops and paramilitary forces are at hyper vigil in Kashmir at very low cost to Pakistan, ensuring enormous expenditure to keep our military and polity bogged down.

Rewind to December 8, 1989, after much tumult and controversy with a V.P. Singh National Front government recently in place, a tumultuous event takes place. Union Home Minister Mufti Mohammad Sayeed's daughter Rubaiya is abducted by JKLF militants and the world is turned upside down. Top erstwhile Jan Morcha leaders arrive at the house of Sayeed, where he is inconsolable as Arun Nehru, Arif Mohammad Khan and Satya Pal Malik (now Governor of J&K) are trying to convince him to appear on the national television to say that she is the nation's daughter and it's imperative that she be set free.

But a tearful Sayeed has lost all reason to think, overcome by extreme emotion, for obvious reasons. He refuses to do anything - stunned and struck by inertia.

Just six days earlier Mufti Saheb had taken oath as the first Kashmiri Muslim Home Minister in V.P. Singh's government. At the same time, JKLF's Asfaq Majid Wani wanted to do something spectacular in Kashmir Valley. His charter was to kick-start the "revolution" and he didn't know where to begin.

Watching the oath-taking of Mufti Saheb, he thought of an audacious PLO-type of plan to rattle the newly formed government. The original plot, conceived by Wani, was to kidnap Mufti's son, reportedly a doctor in Lal Ded hospital. But once recces were carried out, the son turned out to be a daughter - Dr Rubaiya Sayeed. As she finished her shift and left for home around 3 p.m. on December 8 boarding a bus at Exhibition Crossing, JKLF militants took over the bus with Wani and others following in a car.

Around 5.30 p.m., JKLF top brass Javed Mir called up 'Kashmir Times' and relayed the news of abduction of the Union Home Minister's daughter. All hell broke loose, with phones ringing non-stop in the Valley and Delhi. The triumph of V.P. Singh slaying Rajiv Gandhi was lost in translation as panic gripped the security mavens.

After 122 hours in captivity, against the wishes of then J&K Chief Minister Farooq Abdullah, five top separatists were released for Rubaiya. It became a watershed moment for Kashmiris as they brought India to its knees.

Since then the trajectory in Kashmir has been southwards.

One would think that the next big play was the hijacking of IC 814, taking it to Kandahar and securing the release of Maulana Masood Azhar, but then we are missing the wood for the trees.

The swapping of three militants for 155 hostages of the hijacked Indian Airlines plane was not the first incident of its kind after Rubaiya Sayeed's kidnapping in 1989, but one of several high-profile kidnappings which have gone unnoticed. Following the Rubaiya playbook, innumerable abductions took place and the release of many militants took place. The period between December 1989 and January 1992 saw frenetic abductions.

Prominent among them was the abduction of Tassaduq Dev, brother-in-law of then Union Parliamentary Affairs Minister Ghulam Nabi Azad by Al Umar Mujahideen in January 1992. Three jailed activists of Al Umar were set free in exchange for Dev's release on January 17. Before this came the abduction of Nahida Soz, daughter of then National Conference MP Saifuddin Soz, by Jammu and Kashmir Students Liberation Front (JKSLF) in August 1991. Nahida was released when the government set free a Pakistan-trained hard-core militant, Mushtaq Ahmed.

Indian Oil Corporation Executive Director K. Dorraiswamy was abducted by activists of Ikhwan-Ul Muslimeen in Srinagar on July 29, 1991. His release on August 21 was possible when the government set free six militants. The released militants, included Javed Shalla, main accused in the kidnap and murder cases of Kashmir University Vice-Chancellor Mushir-Ul Haq and HMT General Manager H.L. Khera in 1990. Seven more militants were set free to seek the release of Mir Nassar Ullah, son of former J&K Minister G.M. Mir Lasjan, A.K. Dhar, scientist and T.K. Raina, retired Deputy Commissioner, abducted in March 1992.

There have been many other such instances - kidnappings of Dr Mustafa Aslam, son-in-law of then PCC President Ghulam Rasool Kar (February 24, 1992), Fayaz Ahmed Sheikh, son of then Additional Chief Secretary Sheikh Ghulam Rasool (March 21, 1992) and Ghulam Hassan Zia, assistant station director of AIR (April 1992). It is not known how the Government made their release possible.

Similarly, Allah Tigers militant outfit abducted former Member of Legislative Council (MLC) Habib-Ullah Bhat on March 2, 1992 and released him a month later on April 3. The number of militants, if any, set free in exchange for his release is not known. Likewise, J&K Bank chairman M.S. Qureshi was abducted on June 28, 1992 and later released unconditionally.

The Rubaiya Sayeed case had set a precedent for kidnappings for seeking release of jailed militants. According to government statistics, the state witnessed an upsurge in abductions after Rubaiya's kidnapping. While only one kidnapping, that of Rubaiya, was reported in 1989, 169 abductions were reported in 1990, 290 in 1991, 281 in 1992, 349 in 1993 and 368 in 1995. It virtually became a cottage industry.

Incidentally, in one of these kidnapping cases, no militant was released for seeking release of Kashmir University Vice-Chancellor Mushir-Ul Haq and HMT GM H.L. Khera in 1990. They were killed by the captors.

In a first, six Western tourists were kidnapped by Al-Faran, an Islamist militant organisation from the Liddarwat area of Pahalgam in the Anantnag district on July 4, 1995. The government refused to succumb to their demands. The six victims included two British tourists, Keith Mangan (from Middlesbrough) and Paul Wells; two Americans, John Childs of Simsbury, Connecticut, and Donald Hutchings of Spokane, Washington; a German, Dirk Hasert; and a Norwegian, Hans Christian Ostrø. Mangan's and Hutchings' wives were left behind by the kidnappers as their husbands were abducted.

A note released by the kidnappers a day after the kidnappings read, "Accept our demands or face dire consequences. We are fighting against anti-Islamic forces. Western countries are anti-Islam, and America is the biggest enemy of Islam." Childs managed to escape and was rescued four days later. Ostrø was beheaded by his abductors and his body was found near Pahalgam on August 13, 1995. His body was taken to AIIMS, New Delhi, where a postmortem was conducted by Professor T.D. Dogra, who established the beheading as ante mortem and reported that the words 'Al Faran' were carved onto his chest.

The kidnappers demanded the release of Pakistani militant Maulana Masood Azhar who had been imprisoned by India and 20 other prisoners.

Several national and international organisations issued appeals to Al-Faran to release the tourists. Representatives of the embassies of the victims' countries also visited Kashmir frequently to seek their release, without success.

In December 1995, the kidnappers left a note that they were no longer holding the men hostage. Mangan, Wells, Hutchings, and Hasert have never been found and are presumed to have been killed. In May 1996, a captured militant told Indian investigators and FBI agents that he had heard that all four hostages had been shot dead on December 13, 1995, nine days after an Indian military ambush that killed four of the original hostage-takers, including the man said to have been leading them, Abdul Hamid Turki.

Journalists Adrian Levy and Catherine Scott-Clark claim, however, in their book 'The Meadow', that the remaining hostages were sold from Al-Faran to Ghulam Nabi Mir, also known as Azad Nabi, who held them for months before shooting them dead on December 24, 1995.

(Concluded)

--IANS
chetak
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Re: Internal Security Watch

Post by chetak »

the affiliations of these 100 guys must be made known and their madrasas isolated


Lanka deports 600 clerics, including 100 Indians

Lanka deports 600 clerics, including 100 Indians

Monday, 13 May 2019

Out of the 600 foreigners including 200 hardcore maulvis (Muslim religious preachers) deported by Colombo over the last week after the suicide bombings there, over a 100 were Indians. They, along with those from Pakistan and Maldives, were suspected to be engaged in radicalisation in the Sri Lankan mosques.

Besides the Indians, clerics from Pakistan and Maldives have also been deported in large numbers owing to their terror links that emerged after serial suicide bombings in Colombo on Sunday Easter last month that took a toll of over 250 persons including 11 Indians. Besides the 200 maulvis, the 400 other individuals are also suspected to have travelled on tourist visas but have been essentially been engaged in radical preachings, sources said.

Sri Lankan authorities have identified about 1,200 such individuals who are being screened for terror links and depending upon antecedent verification more such clerics are likely to be deported to the respective countries.

The revelation of the Indian maulvis in radicalisation activities in the island nation has set alarm bells ringing in the security establishment here as they apprehend the international terror groups might have developed a hub of such transnational radical preachers in the country.

The deportations began on Tuesday after the Sri Lankan authorities informed the respective foreign missions on the issue. By Thursday, the 600 such radicals were deported to the respective countries.

Pakistani clerics have infiltrated the mosques in the region including in Sri Lanka, Bangladesh, Myanmar and Maldives and even in some of the ASEAN countries. These clerics are being exploited by the Pakistani Inter-Services Intelligence for the larger design of implementing state agenda of sponsoring terror in the neighbourhood, sources said.

The sources said such radical clerics are also part of the transnational radicalization networks of the international terror groups like the Al Qaeda and ISIS who have a long term agenda of radicalisation and subsequently recruit them into their fold for their terror designs, including logistics management chain and funding through illegal narcotics supply chain.

During the last over two years, Indian clerics in large number, as revealed by the Sri Lankan deportation, are also taking up jobs of Islamic preaching in foreign shores.

In the wake of the development, the challenge for the security agencies is two-fold: first, to keep tabs on their activities after their deportation, and secondly to establish their role and extent of involvement in radicalization during their stay in Sri Lanka, insiders said.

Officials also said the Indian security agencies will have an onerous task ahead to contain the impact of the deported radical clerics.

They said counter-terrorism and security-related issues come under the domain of the security agencies in so far as Sri Lanka is concerned as any adverse activity there has a direct bearing on the security calculus in South India, especially Tamil Nadu.

Ahead of carrying out the suicide bombing in Colombo, chief National Thowheed Jamat Zaharan Hashim had stayed in South India for three months but remained undetected by the Intelligence Bureau.
Singha
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Re: Internal Security Watch

Post by Singha »

google news
The Enforcement Directorate (ED), investigating links between former ICICI Bank managing director and chief executive officer Chanda Kochhar and the Videocon Group, has expanded its probe into a total of 24 loans aggregating Rs 7,862 crore that, it believes, were loaned “illegally and criminally” by the bank to the conglomerate when she was in charge between 2009 and 2018.

Both ED and the Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI), which started looking at quid-pro-quos between Videocon Group chief Venugopal Dhoot and Kochhar after it emerged (courtesy, a whistle-blower) that the businessman was an investor in Kochhar’s husband, Deepak Kochhar’s company, were initially focusing on six high-value loans worth Rs 1,875 crore given by the bank to Videocon Group companies between 2009 and 2011, as alleged in the CBI FIR.
Singha
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Re: Internal Security Watch

Post by Singha »

a ulfa veteran and a tv starlet has been arrested for guwahati grenade blast outside central mall on zoo road.
3 more people are on the run.

http://www.theshillongtimes.com/2019/05 ... dentified/

about 30kg misc bomb making material recovered from rented house by this duo
Lilo
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Re: Internal Security Watch

Post by Lilo »

Islamic State group targeted Kerala RSS leaders, HC judges and senior police officers: NIA tells Court during Kanakamala IS case trial
19-May-2019

Kochi: Ansar-ul-Khilafah Kerala, the Kerala unit of Islamic State (IS) had plans to attack senior RSS leaders in Kozhikode to announce its reach in 2016, said National Investigation Agency (NIA) at the NIA court in Kochi during the trial in the Kanakamala ISIS camp case. An ISIS module was busted by security agencies at Kanakamala in Kannur in 2016.

Producing evidence to substantiate the prosecution's argument, NIA prosecutor Arjun Ambalapatta told the court that 'the members of a Facebook page named Ansar formed six separate groups on Telegram to discuss Jihad and plan attacks. They first formed a Telegram group named Baab-al-Nur (Gateway to Divine Light) with 25 members.'

NIA had seized the smartphones of the accused and recovered chats in Baab-Al-Nur group from August 12, 2016, to September 9, 2016. “Chats in the group on August 15 was against democracy and the celebration of the Independence Day. They claimed the Independence Day as a celebration of Kaffirs (infidel),” Arjun submitted before the court.

According to NIA, on August 18, an accused claimed that Jihad with Kaffir will help in re-establishing the Caliphate. Currently, the Islamic countries are allies of Kaffirs and these nations could not even implement proper Sharia laws in their countries.

The group members discussed to attack pro-RSS leaders to showcase their ‘reach’ in another chat on August 27.

According to reports, the terrorist group targeted Valsan Thillankeri and other senior RSS functionaries in the state. But they could not act on it due to the presence of police security which was provided to Valsan Master. Valsan Thillnkeri is a senior RSS leader in Kerala and a member of RSS Kerala Prant Karyakari. The prosecutor said the group even discussed attacking two well-known High Court Judges and senior police officer P N Unni Rajan.

As per NIA investigation report, a National Institute Technology (NIT) Calicut graduate Shajeer Mangalasseri Abdullah was the ‘amir’ (head) of the Ansar-ul-Khilafah Kerala, ISIS Kerala module.

He was in touch with the ISIS terrorist leaders from abroad via 'Telegram' and other social media platforms. According to media reports, after completing civil engineering in 2002, Shajeer got a job in the UAE in 2004. In 2016, he left for Afghanistan to fight for the ISIS after arriving in Kerala on a two-day leave. Seventh accused in the Kanakamala IS case, Shajeer was killed in Afghanistan in 2016 after the US bombed the Nangarhar province. (With inputs from NIE)
MeshaVishwas
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Re: Internal Security Watch

Post by MeshaVishwas »

Breaking: 11 killed including NPP candidate and his son in an attack by suspected NSCN(K) in Arunachal Pradesh. @ThePrintIndia
https://twitter.com/sneheshphilip/statu ... 00577?s=19
Om Shanti to the victims.
Khaplang's chamchas need to be neutralized. :x
Varoon Shekhar
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Re: Internal Security Watch

Post by Varoon Shekhar »

And these people are not even native Arunachalis( or is this mistaken). It's a Naga group. What the hell are they doing in AP? This is an attack on democracy, besides being an horrific act of violence. Will the Indian media stop moronically talking about Godse and Gandhi, and give its attention to this incident? Absolutely ridiculous.
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