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| India-Pakistan |
| New leads emerge on SIMI terror plans |
| 2008-04-02 |
| Students Islamic Movement of India leaders conducted at least three secret combat camps last year, police investigating a group of top SIMI leaders held in Indore believe. New recruits were taught basic jungle-craft, elementary marksmanship with air-rifles and the principles of bomb-making, police sources told The Hindu. SIMI’s leading bomb-maker, Mumbai-based Mohammad Subhan — alleged to have been linked to the perpetrators of the 2003 Gateway of India terror strike — was the principal instructor at the camps. Investigators believe the first of these camps was held in the third week of April, 2007, near Hubli in Karnataka. The camp was organised by SIMI’s south India chief, Hafiz Husain, and Shibli Peedical Abdul, an Idukki-born computer engineer who is alleged to have links with the Lashkar-e-Taiba terror cell which carried out the 2006 serial bombings in Mumbai. Operating under the code-name ‘Adnan,’ Husain had overseen the large-scale expansion of SIMI’s operations in Karnataka. A resident of Bijapur’s Jamia Road area, Husain ran a network of religious front organisations through which SIMI drew much of its cadre. Abdul, who worked as a computer engineer with a multinational company in Bangalore, was among his key lieutenants. Several of their recruits are thought to have worked with Andhra Pradesh-based Lashkar operative Raziuddin Nasir in an abortive plot to stage bombings targeting western tourists in Goa. Among them was Yahya Kamakutty, a computer engineer drawn to SIMI through SARANI, a front organisation headed by Abdul. Nasir, Kamakutty and several other members of the cell were held in Bangalore last month. Police sources say similar training camps were held by SIMI at Mhow, Madhya Pradesh, in late October, 2007, and then near Kottayam, Kerala, in December, 2007. In each case, front organisations controlled by SIMI made arrangements for the camps, while cadre told their families they were travelling to retreats to further their religious education. Preparations Documents sized at SIMI’s Indore safe-house suggest the training camps could have been preparatory exercises for a programme of continued “selective violence” agreed on at closed-door discussions between top SIMI leaders after the Hubli camp. SIMI planned to contact fraternal organisations, including the Taliban, to seek further resources for its campaign. SIMI’s jihadist leadership also decided to resume publication of three jihadist magazines, Jihad: Fitr-e-Jamhooriyat [‘Jihad: The Commencement of Democracy’] and Aaiye, Jannat ki Sair Karaein [‘Welcome to the Journey Into Paradise’]. Publication of the magazines had been terminated by SIMI’s last president, Shahid Badr Falahi, in an effort to distance the organisation’s leadership from jihadists. At Hubli, SIMI’s leadership sought to outflank anti-jihad Islamists led by Falahi, by abolishing the central committee he controls. The leadership also forbade the organisation from participating in politics and, most important, abolished the age limit for membership — allowing pro-jihad leader Safdar Nagori to remain in the organisation. Nagori, secretary-general of the organisation at the time of its proscription in 2001, was among the 13 SIMI leaders held in Indore last week. Wanted by police in half a dozen States, including Maharashtra, Karnataka, Andhra Pradesh and Delhi, Nagori — believed to be the principal architect of SIMI’s turning to the jihad — had evaded arrest since 2001. |
| Posted by:Fred |