The Islamic State (ISIS) has allegedly launched a fresh campaign over the cyberspace to lure Keralites into the terror outfit using images of Malayalee recruits killed in presumed US attacks in Afghanistan. The new campaign has appeared just when the investigating and Intelligence agencies have been looking into a similar campaign the outfit had embarked on earlier.
In a 150-second video being propagated over the cyberspace using the social media platform, Telegram, features images of five Keralite ISIS recruits who were believed to have been killed in attacks in Nangarhar province of Afghanistan. The five young men shown in the video had been described as Keralites martyred on God’s path.
Sources in the Kerala Police’s Intelligence wing said that the contents of the video had all the hallmarks of ISIS propaganda material and this showed that it had been prepared for or by the campaign wing of the terror group based in Afghanistan. They said that the images shown in the material were from Afghanistan’s ISIS strongholds.
The video helped the agencies in identifying some of the Keralites killed in Afghanistan while fighting for the Islamic State. Four of them were identified as Murshid Muhammad and TK Hafeezuddin from Kasaragod, Shajeer Abdullah Mangalassery from Kozhikode and Yahia, a native of Palakkad. The identity of the fifth youth was yet to be confirmed.
Murshid Muhammad, Hafeezuddin and Yahia were among a group of 21 persons including six women and three children who had gone missing from the country mid-2016 and were feared to have joined the ISIS in Afghanistan. Of the 21 persons, 17 belonged to Padanna and Thrikkarippur in Kasaragod district and four were natives of Yakkara in Palakkad district.
The National Investigation Agency (NIA) believes that Shajeer Mangalassery was the ISIS’s chief recruiter for Kerala. The fifth youth shown in the video is thought to be Sibi from Kanjikkode in Palakkad district who, according to earlier reports, was one of five Keralites who had joined the ISIS while in Bahrain and were killed in US attacks in Aleppo, Syria.
The video used for the latest campaign being carried out by the ISIS through a Telegram group, created two months back and named Kerala Xposed, contains messages calling on Keralites to join the outfit. The video also contains pages of an ISIS publication and verses from Quran that praise martyrs and martyrdom in Jihad.
The campaign material, intended at “revealing the truth hypocrisies”, alleges that Kerala had observed the Holy Month of Ramadan in anti-Islamic ways by watching movies and listening to music. It also accuses the Muslim clerics in Kerala of not teaching the real Quran.
An Intelligence source said that such ISIS campaigns need not be limited to Kerala. “It is entirely possible that the terror group is carrying out such campaigns targeting youths in other countries as well. There should be groups of ISIS cadres from different countries engaged in this,” he said.
According to sources, the WhatsApp campaign the ISIS had carried out earlier through the group Message to Kerala, which seems to have been scrapped, could have been anchored by Abdul Rashid Abdullah, described as the leader of the Keralites who that had gone missing last year. This campaign had come to the notice of the agencies after a trader in Kasaragod, who had received several voice messages, lodged a complaint with the police.
Yahia from Palakkad, who has been identified as one of the five Keralite ISIS recruits killed in Afghanistan, was brother of Isa, another youth who was among the 21-member group. Both Isa and Yahia were Christians who had embraced Islam. Their wives, both converts to Islam, one from Hinduism and the other from Christianity, had gone missing along with them.