By Easwaran Rutnam
India and Sri Lanka are probing links between the Easter Sunday bombers and groups in India, and examining whether they are part of a larger Jihad network linked to the Islamic State (IS), sources said.
India’s National Investigation Agency (NIA) has already arrested a suspect in Kerala who had claimed he followed the teachings of the National Thowheed Jamath (NTJ) Leader Zahran Hashim.
He had admitted to planning attacks in Kerala, including suicide attacks.
Hashim was the mastermind of the Easter Sunday attacks targeting churches and hotels in Sri Lanka.
British, US, and Indian investigators are among several foreign agencies assisting Sri Lanka in the investigations into the attacks.
Interpol also deployed a team to Sri Lanka to assist the national authorities investigating the series of bomb attacks at churches and hotels which left nearly 300 dead and some 500 injured.
Interpol said that it conducted checks against the organisation’s stolen and lost travel documents and nominal databases in order to identify potential investigative leads and international connections.
Diplomatic sources following the investigations said that there was no clear evidence yet to prove if Hashim had actually visited India for his terror-related work.
However, it is now clear Hashim did have some links with groups or individuals in India and possibly in some other countries who are also followers of the IS terror group.
It was earlier believed that the Tamil Nadu Thowheed Jamath (TNTJ) was the Indian link to the NTJ.
However, the TNTJ denied any links to the NTJ.
Last week, Indian media reported that a software engineer suspected by authorities in Sri Lanka of providing technical and logistical support to the suicide bombers of the 21 April attacks, was also a suspected handler of two IS operatives arrested by the Gujarat Anti-Terrorist Squad (ATS) two years back.
The Sri Lankan software engineer, identified as 24-year-old Aadhil Ameez, was a link between groups that attacked churches and hotels in Sri Lanka and killed more than 250 people.
According to ATS officials, two suspects, identified as Mohamad Kasim Stimberwala, a laboratory technician with a hospital in Ankleshwar, and Ubed Ahmed Mirza, a practising lawyer in Surat, were arrested on 25 October 2017.
The duo followed the ideology of IS and was planning to carry out a lone wolf attack on a synagogue in the Khadia area of Ahmedabad.
DNA India had reported that both the suspected operatives of IS were under the influence of Abdullah-el-Faisal – a radical preacher based in Jamaica – and for many years, they were planning to cause terrorist acts. ATS officials said they recovered several WhatsApp chats and telephonic call records of the suspects during the investigation. Miraz had spoken about Ameez based in Sri Lanka. In the chat, Ameez was identified as an ISIS handler and a person who could take up the cause of jihad.
“We have recovered one of the recordings of Miraz, in which he had taken the name of Aadhil Ameez. They were also bragging about assassinating the PM in Tamil Nadu and talked about carrying out an attack in Sri Lanka,” a senior ATS official was quoted as saying by DNA India.
Indian diplomatic sources told The Sunday Morning that all the information gathered by Indian investigative agencies on anyone linked to the Easter Sunday bombers is being shared with the Sri Lankan investigators.
The software engineer arrested in Colombo over the Easter Sunday attacks was reported to be an employee of Virtusa and he was arrested following a raid on the company in Colombo.
However, on Friday, Virtusa insisted there was no “raid” on the Virtusa office and the Police had been invited to conduct a sweep of the Virtusa facilities, just as other local businesses had recently done as part of routine activities.
“Further, no arrests were made during the search at any point. The Police informed us that a single employee was taken into custody while at an undisclosed location,” Virtusa disclosed on Friday.
IS expanding
Meanwhile, the Islamic State continues to brag about the attacks in Sri Lanka and its success.
The editors of the IS-linked magazine "Shabaab al-Khilafah" (Youth of the Caliphate) released its eighth issue last week, featuring in it incitement posters and summaries of threatening videos produced by supporting media groups over the past month.
The magazine gives coverage to the attacks in Sri Lanka, the SITE Intelligence Group said.
The SITE Intelligence Group, which is closely monitoring the activities of the Islamic State, also said that the attacks on Muslims in Sri Lanka following the Easter Sunday attacks is exactly what IS and ISIS want. To fuel sectarian violence it can further exploit.
The Islamic State is slowly trying to expand its presence after losing ground in Syria.
SITE Intelligence Group Director Rita Katz said in addition to its newly-created "Hind Province" in Kashmir, ISIS continues to attack a wide range of countries, with notable instances in Congo, Libya, and Somalia.
“As ISIS seeks to build and restructure foundations of insurgencies across the globe after its losses in Iraq and Syria, it is attempting to recruit also from Pakistan, a country with an existing jihadi-militant population,” Katz said.
Katz also said that WhatsApp has been found to be the more popular applications used by ISIS, and its use rose dramatically when it began using end-to-end encryption, an extremely reliable privacy feature.
When contacted, the Police media said that they could not reveal details into ongoing investigations as that could hamper them.
India and Sri Lanka are probing links between the Easter Sunday bombers and groups in India, and examining whether they are part of a larger Jihad network linked to the Islamic State (IS), sources said.
India’s National Investigation Agency (NIA) has already arrested a suspect in Kerala who had claimed he followed the teachings of the National Thowheed Jamath (NTJ) Leader Zahran Hashim.
He had admitted to planning attacks in Kerala, including suicide attacks.
Hashim was the mastermind of the Easter Sunday attacks targeting churches and hotels in Sri Lanka.
British, US, and Indian investigators are among several foreign agencies assisting Sri Lanka in the investigations into the attacks.
Interpol also deployed a team to Sri Lanka to assist the national authorities investigating the series of bomb attacks at churches and hotels which left nearly 300 dead and some 500 injured.
Interpol said that it conducted checks against the organisation’s stolen and lost travel documents and nominal databases in order to identify potential investigative leads and international connections.
Diplomatic sources following the investigations said that there was no clear evidence yet to prove if Hashim had actually visited India for his terror-related work.
However, it is now clear Hashim did have some links with groups or individuals in India and possibly in some other countries who are also followers of the IS terror group.
It was earlier believed that the Tamil Nadu Thowheed Jamath (TNTJ) was the Indian link to the NTJ.
However, the TNTJ denied any links to the NTJ.
Last week, Indian media reported that a software engineer suspected by authorities in Sri Lanka of providing technical and logistical support to the suicide bombers of the 21 April attacks, was also a suspected handler of two IS operatives arrested by the Gujarat Anti-Terrorist Squad (ATS) two years back.
The Sri Lankan software engineer, identified as 24-year-old Aadhil Ameez, was a link between groups that attacked churches and hotels in Sri Lanka and killed more than 250 people.
According to ATS officials, two suspects, identified as Mohamad Kasim Stimberwala, a laboratory technician with a hospital in Ankleshwar, and Ubed Ahmed Mirza, a practising lawyer in Surat, were arrested on 25 October 2017.
The duo followed the ideology of IS and was planning to carry out a lone wolf attack on a synagogue in the Khadia area of Ahmedabad.
DNA India had reported that both the suspected operatives of IS were under the influence of Abdullah-el-Faisal – a radical preacher based in Jamaica – and for many years, they were planning to cause terrorist acts. ATS officials said they recovered several WhatsApp chats and telephonic call records of the suspects during the investigation. Miraz had spoken about Ameez based in Sri Lanka. In the chat, Ameez was identified as an ISIS handler and a person who could take up the cause of jihad.
“We have recovered one of the recordings of Miraz, in which he had taken the name of Aadhil Ameez. They were also bragging about assassinating the PM in Tamil Nadu and talked about carrying out an attack in Sri Lanka,” a senior ATS official was quoted as saying by DNA India.
Indian diplomatic sources told The Sunday Morning that all the information gathered by Indian investigative agencies on anyone linked to the Easter Sunday bombers is being shared with the Sri Lankan investigators.
The software engineer arrested in Colombo over the Easter Sunday attacks was reported to be an employee of Virtusa and he was arrested following a raid on the company in Colombo.
However, on Friday, Virtusa insisted there was no “raid” on the Virtusa office and the Police had been invited to conduct a sweep of the Virtusa facilities, just as other local businesses had recently done as part of routine activities.
“Further, no arrests were made during the search at any point. The Police informed us that a single employee was taken into custody while at an undisclosed location,” Virtusa disclosed on Friday.
IS expanding
Meanwhile, the Islamic State continues to brag about the attacks in Sri Lanka and its success.
The editors of the IS-linked magazine "Shabaab al-Khilafah" (Youth of the Caliphate) released its eighth issue last week, featuring in it incitement posters and summaries of threatening videos produced by supporting media groups over the past month.
The magazine gives coverage to the attacks in Sri Lanka, the SITE Intelligence Group said.
The SITE Intelligence Group, which is closely monitoring the activities of the Islamic State, also said that the attacks on Muslims in Sri Lanka following the Easter Sunday attacks is exactly what IS and ISIS want. To fuel sectarian violence it can further exploit.
The Islamic State is slowly trying to expand its presence after losing ground in Syria.
SITE Intelligence Group Director Rita Katz said in addition to its newly-created "Hind Province" in Kashmir, ISIS continues to attack a wide range of countries, with notable instances in Congo, Libya, and Somalia.
“As ISIS seeks to build and restructure foundations of insurgencies across the globe after its losses in Iraq and Syria, it is attempting to recruit also from Pakistan, a country with an existing jihadi-militant population,” Katz said.
Katz also said that WhatsApp has been found to be the more popular applications used by ISIS, and its use rose dramatically when it began using end-to-end encryption, an extremely reliable privacy feature.
When contacted, the Police media said that they could not reveal details into ongoing investigations as that could hamper them.