The Hindu : New Delhi News : SIMI investigators focus on missing terror links

Online edition of India's National Newspaper
Sunday, Mar 30, 2008
ePaper | Mobile/PDA Version

New Delhi

New Delhi

SIMI investigators focus on missing terror links

Praveen Swami

Safdar Nagori remanded to 14-day police custody
He was keen on setting up networks targeting India

NEW DELHI: Intelligence and police officials say the interrogation of the top jihadist ideologue and organiser Safdar Nagori could help to trace missing links in investigations of at least half a dozen major terrorist operations since 2003. On Friday, he was remanded to police custody for two weeks.

Mumbai blasts

Much of the top leadership of the pro-jihad faction of the Students Islamic Movement of India, proscribed in 2001, was among 13 men arrested from a safe house on the fringes of Indore on Wednesday night. Police believe that the men were linked, among others, to the 2003 and 2006 Mumbai serial bombings and an attack on a Muslim religious procession in Malegaon, Maharashtra.

Key issues

Among the key issues investigators hope to resolve is Nagori’s role in organising a meeting from July 4 to 7, 2006 at Ujjain, where key SIMI operatives discussed plans to escalate terror operations. Among those present was SIMI’s Maharashtra general secretary Ehtesham Siddiqui, who is now being tried for his role in the Mumbai serial bombings which took place days later.

Maharashtra police investigators believe that Siddiqui discussed the bombing with another top SIMI operative arrested in Indore on Wednesday, Kerala-born Bangalore software engineer-turned-terrorist Shibly Peedical Abdul.

Now, they hope to find out whether Abdul had any direct role in the bombings — and if Nagori had knowledge of this operation or several subsequent terror strikes.

Data on computers

Investigators will also seek to gain detailed information on the networks Nagori ran by retrieving data stored on the two computers and multiple removable disks which were recovered from the Indore safe house.

He is believed to have been in touch with several Islamist groups in the Indian Diaspora in West Asia — some of which could have funded terrorism.

Police and intelligence officials believe that Nagori flitted among safe houses across the country after SIMI was proscribed in 2001.

From mid-2003, he operated out of a premises in Kolkata’s Metiaburuz neighbourhood, before shifting to Indore in October 2007. He frequently travelled to meet SIMI cadre in Maharashtra and Delhi, and might also have travelled abroad.

Operational links

Intelligence officials in New Delhi, however, were sceptical of reports that Nagori had operational links with international terrorist groups such as the Taliban and Al-Qaeda.

“While he is most likely to have met many West Asian Islamists on the fringes of Al-Qaeda, Nagori was focussed on setting up networks targeting India,” one official told The Hindu.

Much of the speculation on Nagori’s Al-Qaeda and Taliban links has come from the interrogation of Raziuddin Nasir, a SIMI-linked Lashkar-e-Taiba operative held in Bangalore on charges of planning bombings in Goa. Nasir claimed that Nagori had called for 200 volunteers to join forces fighting the U.S. in Afghanistan.

Investigators, however, remain unclear whether Nagori or other SIMI members had in fact made preparations for such an expedition. Although dozens of SIMI operatives received combat-hardening courses in Karnataka, Maharashtra and Madhya Pradesh, and advanced training at facilities in Pakistan and Bangladesh, none is known to have been tasked with military operations outside of India.

Doubtful claims

Officials say Pakistan-trained Nasir’s claims of Taliban links need to be read with some scepticism, designed as they were to bolster his efforts to take control of cells in southern India after the still-unexplained disappearance of the top terror commander Mohammad Abdul Shahid, a Hyderabad resident who operated out of Karachi using the code-name ‘Bilal.’

Political relationship

Despite doubts on the details of Nasir’s account, investigators say they will seek to arrive at a full picture of SIMI’s links with Islamist networks.

SIMI is known to have had a cordial political relationship with the Palestinian Islamist group Hamas, as well as controversial bodies like the World Association of Muslim Youth.

It was also closely linked to the Lashkar and the Hizb ul-Mujahideen.

Printer friendly page
Send this article to Friends by E-Mail

New Delhi