The National Investigation Agency (NIA) has learned that over 30 people from Kerala including the 22 who had gone missing from the State during the May-June period last year are undergoing terror training at the camps of the Islamic State (ISIS) in Nangarhar province in eastern Afghanistan where Osama bin laden had reportedly planned Al Qaeda’s strikes against the US.
The NIA has so far been of the belief that the 22 Keralites including six women and three children who had gone missing under mysterious circumstances were in ISIS camps in Syria but it has now received information from Intelligence agencies that they and about 12 other Keralites who had left India much earlier to join the global terror force are in the Islamic State camps in tribal areas near Jalalabad, capital of Nangarhar.
Intelligence agencies in Afghanistan have informed their Indian counterparts that nearly 3,000 recruits from various countries are undergoing ISIS training in these camps. Following this, the INA has sought the help of the Interpol and the Afghan agencies for collecting further details about the Keralites there. Reports quoting NIA sources said that some important developments could be expected in this regard in this week itself.
The NIA has been tracking the digital footprints of the Keralite recruits of the ISIS and sources said that the agency had credible information on the locations of the camps where they were living and training. At home, the NIA’s investigations are said to have succeeded to a great extent in finding the details of the escape of Keralites into ISIS territories.
The agency has also learned that Sajeer Abdulla Mangalachery alias Sameer Ali of Kozhikode, considered to the chief recruiting agent of the ISIS in Kerala, is undergoing training along with the other Keralites in one of these camps in Nangarhar. The investigators have already traced the point of origin of his Facebook post calling for Jihad in Kerala to these areas.
The information the NIA has received on the camps where the missing Keralites are undergoing training gives credence to reports that the ISIS, after losing Iraqi strongholds Mosul and Raqqa, is currently in the process of shifting its base into Afghanistan. Intelligence agencies are of the opinion that new recruits into the terror force are being sent to Nangarhar as part of efforts in this direction.
The NIA has been working hard to trace the missing Keralites since September last. Subahani Haja Moideen (31), the ISIS’s key Indian recruiter who was arrested from Tamil Nadu last October, had confessed to the agency that over 60 Indians, including the 22 Keralites who had gone missing, had joined the global terror group. He had also said that he himself had been at battle service for the terror force in Mosul for a monthly pay of US$ 100.
Keralites woke up to the magnitude of the ISIS’s penetration into the State in July last after reports came out about the mysterious disappearance of 22 persons, including six women and three children, from Padanna and Thrikkaripur in Kasaragod district and Yakkara in Palakkad district.
All the men and women in the group were young and held high qualifications in medicine, engineering and business management. It is believed that all arrangements for their secret migration to Islamic State territory were made by Abdul Rashid Abdullah of Thrikkaripur. The Agency believes that most of them had reached Afghanistan through Abdu Dhabi and Dubai.
In the meantime, the Intelligence agencies foiled the plans of two persons, Munaf Rahman and Hamzah from Thalassery, Kannur to flee the country to join the ISIS in Syria. Munaf was taken into custody along with his six-member family from Mangalore the other day. He and his friend Hamzah were reportedly planning to fly to Dubai and then sneak in to Syria through Teheran.