Information on the death of five youths from the Malabar region, allegedly Islamic State (ISIS) members, in US attacks in Aleppo, Syria and other reports on links between several Keralites and the terror outfit are suggesting that its penetration into Kerala could be deeper than the investigating and Intelligence agencies had so far feared.
The reports on the death of the youths — hailing from Palakkad, Malappuram, Kozhikode and Kannur districts — who belonged to what is being described as the Bahrain Group of the ISIS have triggered fresh concerns among agencies in the context of the recruitment of about two dozen Keralites into ISIS last year and information on the death of four of them in Afghanistan.
The Central and State agencies are yet to confirm or deny the reports on the death of the youths from Malabar region in Syria. However, sources in the Kerala Police’s Intelligence wing say that these reports need not be distrusted as the information had been received by their relatives.
As per information received so far by relatives and social workers in Kerala, three of the 21 persons including six women and three children – 17 from Kasaragod and four from Palakkad – who had gone missing from the country last year and were feared to have joined the ISIS had so far been killed in US attacks on the terror outfit’s stronghold in Nangarhar, Afghanistan.
Information received in Kerala as recent as in the third week of last month had said, another person, Sajeer Abdullah Mangalassery from Kozhikode, thought to be the chief recruiter of the Keralites’ who joined ISIS’s Afghan camp had also been killed in an attack. Abu Tahir from Palakkad, who was believed to be with an al-Qaeda arm, was killed in Syria in April.
“These reports, Intelligence feeds on the method of the ISIS’s operation and information extracted from ex-ISIS persons already apprehended suggest that the terror group has found some way to communicate with sections of youths here. The penetration may have been deeper than we had thought,” said a source in the Kerala Police’s Intelligence wing.
As per reports, the five Keralite youths who were killed in US attacks in Aleppo had gone to Syria from Bahrain where they had become part of the so-called Bahrain Group of the ISIS. “There are a lot of ifs and buts in all this. It would take a long time for the agencies to get a clear picture as there are no consistent channels for Intelligence-gathering,” said the source.
According to agencies, one of those reportedly killed in Aleppo was Sibi (26) of Kanjikode in Palakkad district, who had gone missing in June last year. Sources said he could have been in contact with Yahia from Yakkara, Palakkad, one among the group of 21 persons who had gone missing last year. Yahia was reportedly killed in Nangarhar in April.
The agencies had earlier learned that the ISIS’s Afghanistan Group – to which the 21 persons who had gone missing from the country in May-June last year reportedly belonged – had launched a campaign over the social media for recruiting men and women from Kerala into the terror outfit.
Several audio clips were sent to over 300 persons in the State as part of this campaign titled ‘Message to Kerala’ but it is still unclear what success the campaign had achieved. Abdul Rashid Abdulla from Thrikkarippur, Kasaragod, group leader of the 21 persons from the State who allegedly joined the ISIS, was said to have been behind the campaign.
Intelligence agencies are examining whether the Keralites who reached the ISIS centres in Syria via Bahrain had any connections with those who had joined the outfit’s Afghan camps. They believe that the plan of the group of 21 persons was also to join ISIS camps in Syria but they could not succeed in that objective due to changed security circumstances.