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Blasts underline continuing threat

Praveen Swami

Investigators will focus on SIMI-trained Karnataka jihadists

SIMI’s operations in Bangalore date back to 2000
Training camp held at Castle Rock near Hubli

NEW DELHI: Last year, when police in Karnataka stumbled on an Islamist cell based in Bangalore, it became clear India’s technology capital was one of the principal targets of jihadist terror.

Friday’s bombings have made it clear that the threat remains undiminished.

Although it is far too early to arrive at any conclusions of who the perpetrators might have been, investigators will be focusing their energies on a group of Karnataka residents known to have trained at one of half-a-dozen training camps run by the Students Islamic Movement of India in 2006-2007.

Based on statements made by SIMI operatives arrested after a raid on an Indore safe house earlier this year, police believe at least 30 operatives received basic urban combat and explosives training at these camps. Less than half of these trained operatives, though, have been arrested, raising the prospect that more terrorist attacks could lie ahead.

House of hate

SIMI’s operations in Bangalore date back to 2000, when a young SIMI Ikhwan — or full-time cadre — named Abdul Peeidcal Shibli moved to the city.

Recruited by SIMI in 1997, when he stayed at a SIMI-run student hostel in Thiruvananthapuram, Shibli began work at Tata Elexi as a computer programmer. He soon made friends with other Islamists scattered across the city, notably Wipro-GE employee Yahya Kamakutty.

Shibli soon had a SIMI home up and running in Bangalore’s Vivek Nagar area.

Named Sarani after his old hostel in Kerala, Shibli’s house-of-hate later moved to larger premises on the Residential Association Road in Eejipura.

Sarani catered, in the main, to young migrants from south India who had just moved to Bangalore to work or to study, offering them what it marketed as an appropriate Islamic environment.

Residents were expected to follow neo-conservative religious observances. Senior SIMI ideologues like K.T. Mohammad and Mohammad Noor-ul-Amin would often lecture residents on ideological issues. Sarani residents were far from stereotypical, madrasa-educated fanatics: Kamakutty, for example, travelled to the U.S. at least three times on work in 2000-2001 alone.

In 2001, following SIMI’s public declarations of support for Al-Qaeda and the growing involvement of its cadre in Lashkar-e-Taiba terror operations, the group was proscribed. Sarani, however, continued to run, even though Shibli moved to Mumbai the next year, on work. SIMI chief Safdar Nagori visited the hostel in 2002 for three days as did several other senior ideologues from the organisation.

Shibli returned to Bangalore in 2004. Sarani now moved to even larger premises in Bismillah Nagar. By early 2006, Shibli had left his job and joined SIMI full-time.

It was a testing time for the Islamist group. In April, 2006, SIMI held a secret meeting in Bangalore, where its leadership decided to step up organisational work. Later, at a meeting held in Ujjain from July 4-7, 2006, SIMI committed itself to work for an Islamist jihad against the Indian state.

Training camps

SIMI came under intense police pressure in the wake of the 2006 bombings, which took place just days after the Ujjain meeting. None the less, Shibli, Kamakutty and their colleague Hafiz Husain succeeded in making Karnataka a major stage for continued recruitment and training.

In April 2007, less than six months after the bombings, SIMI was able to hold a training camp at Castle Rock near Hubli, under cover of hosting an outdoors event for Sarani residents. Another camp was held in Bijapur in June, 2007, followed by a meeting at Dharwar in August.

Students recruited at these camps received bomb-making and firearms instruction from Subhan at camps held near Indore in September and November, 2007. Instruction in assembling fuel bombs and basic wireless-communication techniques were provided in December, 2007, at a camp held outside Ernakulam, in Kerala.

Of the 40 individuals police believe attended these training camps, over half were Bangalore residents. While police have made several arrests — including Shibli, Kamakutty, Husain and Raziuddin Nasir, who hoped to bomb western tourists in Goa over the New Year’s vacation in 2008 — over half are still missing.

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