New Delhi: Information and Broadcasting Minister Anurag Thakur on Sunday lashed out at the opposition parties and said those who are opposing “The Kerala Story” film are supporters of the proscribed PFI and terror outfit ISIS.
Addressing a function in Gurugram, Thakur said that those who are opposing the film are supporting the agenda of terror group PFI as well the ISIS.
The senior BJP leader said that “The Kerala Story” exposed the conspiracy wherein Hindu and Christian girls were forced into terrorism.
Prime Minister Narendra Modi also mentioned the movie in his recent speech in Karnataka and said, “‘The Kerala story’ is trying to expose the consequences of terrorism in a society, especially in a state like Kerala which is a beautiful land of hardworking, talented and intellectual people.”
Madhya Pradesh has announced that the film will be tax free in the state, while Uttar Pradesh minister Brajesh Pathak has said it will not oppose any proposal to grant similar status in the state.
Multiplexes across Tamil Nadu have cancelled screenings of the controversial film from Sunday, citing law and order issues and poor public response.
ISIS Chief Killed in Syria by Turkey’s Intelligence Agency Says Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan
The suspected leader of the Islamic State group has been killed in Syria in an operation carried out by Turkey’s MIT intelligence agency, Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan said Sunday.
“The suspected leader of Daesh, codename Abu Hussein al-Qurashi, has been neutralized in an operation carried out yesterday by the MIT in Syria,” he announced on television, using the Arabic acronym for the Islamic State organization.
The Islamic State group announced the death of its previous leader, Abu Hasan al-Hashimi al-Qurashi, on November 30, replacing him with Abu Hussein al-Qurashi.
An AFP correspondent in northern Syria said Turkish intelligence agents and local military police, backed by Turkey, had on Saturday sealed off a zone in Jindires, in the northwest region of Afrin.
Residents told AFP that an operation had targeted an abandoned farm that was being used as an Islamic school.
Turkey has deployed troops in northern Syria since 2020, and controls entire zones with the help of Syrian auxiliaries.
(Agencies)
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New Delhi: The NIA on Thursday filed a chargesheet against six people in connection with the October 2022 Coimbatore car bomb blast, saying the prime accused of the terrorist attack was “inspired by ISIS ideology”.
The case pertains to an explosion that took place on October 23, 2022 at an ancient temple, “Arulmigu Kottai Sangameshwarar Thirukovil”, on Eswaran Kovil Street, Ukkadam in Coimbatore.
A vehicle-borne improvised explosives device (V-IED), driven by Jamesha Mubeen, had blown up in front of the temple. Mubeen was killed in the blast, the National Investigation Agency (NIA) said in a statement.
“Mubeen was inspired by ISIS ideology to carry out this attack. He had also taken ‘bayath’ or oath of allegiance to its self-proclaimed Caliph Abu-al-Hasan al-Hashimi al-Qurashi,” it said.
While the charges against Mubeen were abated as he was killed, the agency charged his alleged associates Mohammed Asarutheen, Mohammed Thalha, Firos, Mohammed Riyas, Navas and Afsar Khan under various sections of the Unlawful Activities Prevention Act (UAPA), IPC and the Explosives Substances Act.
Mubeen, the NIA said, was “aided and assisted” by the six in arranging logistics.
“Thalha had sourced the Maruti 800 blue colour car bearing registration number TN-01-F-6163 which was used in the explosion of vehicle-borne IED,” it said.
Firos, Riyas and Navas had loaded the explosives, gas cylinders, etc. in the car making it the potent weapon it became, while Asarutheen and Afsar, both cousins of Mubeen, procured, weighed, mixed and packed the chemical constituents used to manufacture the V-IED used in the attack, the statement said.
A pendrive was recovered from Mohammed Asarutheen and it “contained” video recordings of Jamesha Mubeen, where he had identified himself as a member of Daulat-e-Islamia (or Islamic state), the NIA said.
“He had spoken extensively on his intention to commit a suicide terror attack against the ‘kafirs’ (non-believers) and to become a martyr.
“Mubeen was inspired by the bayans (sermons) of Zahran Hashim, a radical Islamic cleric of Sri Lanka, who masterminded the Easter serial suicide bomb attacks in 2019 killing around 260 people. Mubeen wanted to orchestrate a similar kind of attack against the ‘kafirs’ in India,” it said.
The agency said it also recovered handwritten notes from Mubeen’s residence where criticism of the “existing” democratic system, which are not in tandem with Islamic laws, has been mentioned.
There is also a mention of ‘targets’, including government offices, district courts, public gathering places like parks, railway stations and a few other local temples, in these notes, the NIA claimed.
It said the Islamic State of Khorasan Province’s online magazine called ‘Voice of Khorasan’ corroborated this in an article titled, ‘A Message to the Inhabitants in the Land Occupied by Cow and Mice Worshipping Filths’, where the ISKP took responsibility for this attack.
“The article goes on to state that the attack was revenge to uphold the honour of their religion and to establish Allah’s deen and his law upon his land and to terrorize the ‘Kufr’ and its followers with the threat that it was just the beginning,” the NIA said.
London: A British man arrested at Heathrow Airport over a year ago when he flew back from Pakistan pleaded guilty on Friday to travelling to Syria to join the Islamic State (ISIS) terrorist network.
Shabazz Suleman, who grew up in the High Wycombe area of Buckinghamshire in south-east England, was due to study international relations at university when he vanished while on a family holiday to Turkey in 2014, aged 19.
He was arrested after returning to the UK via Pakistan in October 2021 and charged with a string of terror offences and was due to face trial at the Old Bailey court in London next month. He has now pleaded guilty to preparing acts of terrorism by travelling from the UK to Turkey in order to join ISIS in Syria in August 2014.
Now aged 27, Suleman was also charged with being a member of ISIS, a proscribed organisation, between 2014 and 2017, and receiving training in the use of firearms. Judge Mark Lucraft remanded him in custody until sentencing on May 26.
In an interview with Sky News’ in 2017, Suleman had claimed he spent most of his three years in terrorist territory playing PlayStation and riding his bike.
He spoke about how he’d gone into hiding to try to avoid fighting, sitting in various houses in Raqqa playing Grand Theft Auto or Metal Gear Solid on a PlayStation and having “a normal life in IS territory”.
In Syria, he is said to have assumed the name Abu Shamil al-Britani and is alleged to have carried out guard duty and patrols for ISIS. By June 2015 he had reportedly become disillusioned, saying, “I never thought I was being brainwashed until I saw the way they treat other Sunnis”.
Speaking after leaving ISIS, Suleman told Sky News’: “I take responsibility. I was with ISIS, I was with a terrorist organisation. But I didn’t kill anyone, I hope I didn’t oppress anyone.
“I did have Kalashnikov and a military uniform, but I didn’t hit anyone, I didn’t oppress anyone, if you understand. I was there with military police but like I said, I was in the office.”
Suleman is believed to be among hundreds of British nationals who travelled to the Middle East to join the ranks of ISIS and other terror networks in Syria and Iraq over the years.
While the U.S. troop presence exists explicitly and only to combat ISIS, during my visit the constant threat of attack by Iranian-sponsored militias was palpable. Forces dedicated to coordinating U.S. drones flying over Syrian skies and to radar and air defense systems deployed in U.S. bases in Syria were laser-focused on the array of Iranian-produced drones known to have been used for kamikaze-style attacks on U.S. forces in the region. As CENTCOM has made clear, countering ISIS and preventing its resurgence is the second most vital U.S. priority in the Middle East, but the first is facing down the threats posed by a hostile Iran.
While an ISIS attack during our visit underlined the terror group’s persistent threat, the reason for such a heightened awareness of Iranian threats was revealed on March 23, when an Iranian suicide drone hit a U.S. base in eastern Syria, killing a contractor and wounding five U.S. servicemembers. Such tit-for-tat incidents are far from new — this was the 79th Iranian attack on U.S. forces in Syria since January 2021 — but the deadly nature of the attack was extremely rare. The U.S. has not suffered a combat fatality in Syria for years. Retaliatory U.S. airstrikes on Iran-linked positions in the area followed just hours later, but it is unclear if they would be sufficient to deter further attacks. That Russia has markedly escalated its flight of fighter jets into U.S.-controlled airspace in northeastern Syria has complicated things further. One such ‘overflight’ occurred during our visit to the area — no coincidence given the presence of CENTCOM’s leadership.
Yet despite the challenges from malign states, the fight against ISIS remains the utmost priority. Since late 2019, three successive ISIS leaders have been killed on Syrian soil, along with dozens of senior and mid-level commanders. In terms of counterterrorism, we are unquestionably degrading ISIS. However, the terror group has one invaluable advantage on its side: the remnants of its “state” in the former of its former residents. In the final days of the fateful battle against ISIS’s last stand at al-Baghuz in March 2019, streams of ISIS fighters and family members were captured. Today, more than 10,000 battle-hardened ISIS militants languish in 26 makeshift SDF prisons and a further 54,000 women and children reside in secured camps.
This detainee crisis represents a humanitarian and security challenge the likes of which we have never faced before. On the ground, the scale is staggering, as is the profound security threats associated with it. “When you speak with residents, when you speak with the SDF securing the sites, when you speak with camp administration officials, you get a real sense of looming danger,” CENTCOM’s Kurilla told me after Blackhawk helicopters took us to the largest of the camps, al-Hol. “We have to have a real sense of urgency to address this problem through repatriation, rehabilitation, and reintegration,” Kurilla told me. “This requires all arms of the U.S. government; it requires the international community.”
The scale of this detainee crisis is unprecedented. Twenty-one years ago, 780 terrorism suspects were rendered to Guantanamo Bay, a self-contained detention facility on an isolated island thousands of miles from active conflict. Twenty-one years later, 31 remain there, despite concerted efforts by successive U.S. administrations to prosecute and repatriate prisoners. The ISIS fighters alone, numbering 10,000, would fill 13 Guantanamos at its original capacity. In northeast Syria, by contrast, we are dealing with a total of nearly 65,000 people from at least 55 countries, held in makeshift prisons and vast camps, amid ongoing civil conflict and an ISIS insurgency.
It is hard to understate the mammoth challenge associated with anything close to a resolution here. ISIS literally has an army in prisons — 10,000 in Syria and 20,000 next door in Iraq. At least 5,000 of ISIS’s most dangerous and committed fighters currently reside in Ghweiran prison in Hasakah, northeastern Syria. The facility, a former school, is administered by our SDF partners and its defenses paid for by the U.S. and coalition allies. During a visit to the prison, I heard of a just-foiled ISIS prison break coordinated by an Iraqi leader inside and operatives outside.
Prison breaks are part of ISIS’s DNA. They were the key to its dramatic resurgence in 2014. In January 2022, ISIS launched a massive attack on Ghweiran prison, ramming several vehicles rigged with explosives into exterior walls, then driving pick-up trucks full of weapons into the facility to arm prisoners. The assault had been coordinated by inmates and ISIS operatives on the outside. Some local prison guards had almost certainly been coerced into facilitating the initial attack. Ultimately, the incident triggered a 10-day battle that drew in U.S. and U.K. special forces and left more than 500 people dead. British government money has since reinforced the prison’s defenses, but ISIS is clearly not deterred.
But ISIS is not only interested in freeing its fighters — it is also determined to free the 50,000 women and children held in al-Hol camp, 40 kilometers away. Multiple major ISIS plots to attack al-Hol have been foiled in recent months. As we learned, SDF guards there have begun receiving ISIS threats by cell phone and now only enter the camp in U.S.-provided Bearcat armored vehicles. During a brief foray into the camp, we were flanked by multiple teams of U.S. special forces, American-operated Bradley fighting vehicles stood at every corner and U.S. drones and helicopters were in the sky above us.
The presence of more than 25,000 children in al-Hol is a humanitarian travesty and a ticking time bomb. In September, the SDF completed a weeks-long clearing operation in al-Hol that captured 300 ISIS operatives who had been living among the women and children along with weapons and explosives. A rocket-propelled grenade attack within the camp killed two SDF personnel, but equally concerning was the discovery of several “ISIS schools,” along with photo and video footage showing young children being taught ISIS’s ideology and support for violence and terrorism. The evidence we were shown from within the camp was similar to that created by ISIS’s propaganda outfits at the height of the terror group’s power. For CENTCOM, this is ISIS’s “next generation,” to complement its “army in detention.”
The only resolution to this detainee crisis is returning the men, women and children to their countries of origin for prosecution or rehabilitation and reintegration. Logistically, the challenge here is daunting. The vast majority of the nearly 50,000 women and children are from Iraq and Syria. To date, Iraq has engaged in an impressive returns process, but even so, it will take at least six years to complete. Of the roughly 12,000 Syrians, almost all are from regime-controlled areas, which precludes returns altogether. Following a concerted U.S. diplomatic push, repatriation of third country nationals achieved considerable momentum in 2022, but even so, only 1 percent were actually transferred home. It can take as long as a year to complete a single repatriation case and when it comes to the 10,000 male prisoners, there is no international willingness to repatriate at all.
If the situation remains the same, it will take at least 30 years to return the women and children alone. But U.S. troops, key to containing ISIS and securing the facilities, will almost certainly not be in Syria anywhere near that long due to slowly building pressures at home to disengage from conflicts in the region. Whenever the troops do leave, all hell will break loose. The Syrian regime has an unspeakable track record when it comes to ISIS, having all-but-ignored its rise since 2011. Even earlier, from 2003 to 2010, Assad’s regime actively supported ISIS’s insurgency against U.S. and allied forces in Iraq, providing training, intelligence and financial support, as well as facilitating the arrival of more than 90 percent of its suicide bombers across Syrian territory.
Failing to deal with this detainee crisis is a dream scenario for ISIS. This is a priority for the U.S., with the State Department now convening an inter-agency working group dedicated to the issue. But this is not nearly enough. A major international diplomatic mobilization is required to elevate the response to this challenge to the level required.
When ISIS marched into Mosul and across Iraq and Syria in 2014, the biggest international coalition in modern history took form to intervene. A similar effort is required now. If not, a catastrophic ISIS resurgence is just a matter of time.
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( With inputs from : www.politico.com )
SRINAGAR: National Investigation Agency on Monday said that it carried out raids at Srinagar and Kerala in connection with ISIS Module case.
In a statement issued to media, NIA spokerperson said, “In 2021, the National Investigation Agency had started investigations into Mohammed Ameen @ Abu Yahya, resident of Kadannamanna, district Mallapuram (Kerala), who had been running various ISIS propaganda channels on different social media platforms, such as Telegram, Hoop and Instagram.”
“Through these channels, he was propagating violent ideologies of ISIS and was radicalizing and recruiting new members to this ISIS module. He and his associates had even identified certain individuals for targeted killings and had made plans to undertake Hijrah to Jammu and Kashmir for engaging in terrorist acts and had raised funds from various sources for this trip,” the spokesperson said.
During the probe, it was found that Mohammad Ameen was in touch with Deepthi Marla of Kerala, a converted Muslim, married to Anas Abdul Rahiman of Mangalore.
“In 2015, she had gone to Dubai to pursue studies where she met another woman, Mizha Siddeeque and both women developed an inclination towards ISIS. In 2019, they tried to do Hijrah to Khorasan and reached Tehran, Iran. After reaching Tehran, their contact with ISIS operatives based in Khorasan could not be established,” he further said.
They both returned to India, and Deepthi got in touch with Ameen, Obaid Hamid Matta, Madesh Shankar and others and made plans to undertake Hijrah to ISIS administered territory.
In January 2020, she went to Srinagar to meet Obaid to plan the Hijrah and stayed in Srinagar for one week, he said.
“One of the common contacts between Deepthi and Obaid, Uzair Azhar Bhat, who is suspected to have been part of the conspiracy, was raided today. NIA conducted search at Bhat’s house in Karfali Mohalla, Srinagar and seized digital devices. The devices are being examined and further investigations are in progress,” reads the statement. (GNS)
New Delhi: A special NIA court in Rajasthan has sentenced an ISIS-linked terrorist to seven years of rigorous imprisonment for conspiring to carry out terrorist acts in the country, an official said on Tuesday.
The special judge of the NIA court Jaipur convicted Mohammed Sirajuddin alias “Siraj” in a case registered in 2016 under various sections of Indian Penal Code and the Unlawful Activities (Prevention) Act, a spokesperson of the federal agency said.
The case pertains to the promotion of the ISIS ideology and Siraj influencing others over social media platforms such as Facebook, WhatsApp and Telegram to become members of the proscribed terror group and to indulge in terrorist activities, the spokesperson said.
Sirajuddin, who hails from Gulbarga area in Karnataka, was found inciting the youth to carry out acts of violence and terror.
“He was living in Jaipur and was using online chats and messages advocating and spreading the ideology of the ISIS, also known as Islamic State, in various parts of the world,” the spokesperson said.
The official said he also arranged and assisted in organising online discussions and meetings among active ISIS operatives to plan and execute acts of violence and terrorism in the country.
