IS cell in touch with Syria man

Among the suspects arrested in an NIA and Hyderabad police crackdown on an “ISIS terror module”, Mohammed Ibrahim Yazdani, Abdullah Bin Ahmed Al Amoodi, aka Fahad, and Mohammed Ilyas Yazdani have been identified as the group leaders. The suspects were apparently in touch with key ISIS recruiter Shafi Armar, a former Indian Mujahideen operative based in Syria, and took orders from him, police sources said. They had been in touch with Armar over the Internet.

Mohammed Ibrahim Yazdani, 30, an engineer from Chatta Bazaar, and his brother Mohammed Iliyas Yazdani (24), from Aman Nagar, were family friends of Abdullah. The three men had started working together to attract other youngsters to the ISIS.

Sources said the explosive material and arms were seized from the houses of the two brothers in Amannagar and Chatta Bazaar. The suspects had allegedly practised shooting in Bandlaguda, on Hyderabad’s outskirts, and in Narsapur in Medak district, said police sources.

Apart from these three, the NIA arrested Mohammed Irfan, aka Yaqus, 27, from Zahera Nagar, Mir Alam Mandi, and Habeeb Muhammmed, 32, from Yousuf Gulshan Colony, Hashamabad.“The NIA conducted searches at 11 locations in Hyderabad since the early hours of Wednesday morning with the assistance of the Hyderabad city police,” said the police.

It had received credible information that some youth from Hyderabad and their accomplices had entered into a criminal conspiracy to wage war against the government of India by collecting weapons and explosive material to commit terrorist acts by targeting public places in various parts of the country,” said a senior Telangana state police official.

Following Central and state intelligence inputs, at least 10 teams of the NIA and city police cordoned off the areas of each suspect’s house and raided their premises. “NIA has taken these suspects into custody for an inquiry. The material seized include firearms, ammunition, urea, acids, hydrogen peroxide and some other chemicals, electronic gadgets and other incriminating material,” said a senior official from TS police. “It is reliably learnt that the said persons were working at the behest of the handlers of ISIS,” added the official.

Investigators are verifying the source of the material procured by the accused. The terror cell had been planning to carry out pressure-bomb attacks using vessels and explosive material, added sources.

Suspects under radar for online activities The men who were picked up by the National Investigation Agency on Wednesday had initially come under the radar of intelligence agencies because of their online activities.

Senior officials from the Telangana state police said that they were in regular touch with IS sympathisers from other countries on social media networks. They also allegedly searched for material related to Islamic State ideologies. “One of the suspects had liked an Islamic State’s page in Facebook run by an Indian national abroad. From there, he came across another page suspected to be run by key IS recruiter Shafi Armar. As soon as he liked the page, the page admin contacted him personally over FB chat. From then on, he had been in constant touch with the IS recruiter and working on his behest in Hyderabad,” said a senior police official who was part of the intelligence gathering.

Central intelligence agencies had tapped into the activities of at least two of the suspects and had been monitoring them for months. Last year, several FB pages and groups run by IS recruiters were taken down by Facebook and enforcement agencies. Intelligence officials found that the suspects had been active in these groups as well.

“They also searched for video, text and audio material released by IS to spread the extreme ideology,” added an official.

NIA officials have seized at least seven pen drives, two laptops, and computer hard disks from an Internet cafe run by one the suspects.