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India-Pakistan
Safdar Nagori and SIMI's jihad
2008-03-30
A thick red line ran through the words ‘democracy,’ ‘secularism’ and ‘polytheism,’ followed by an emphatic “No!”

Some of the other slogans the Students Islamic Movement of India had plastered across Mumbai in 2001 were even more strident: “Mohammad is our commander; the Quran our constitution; and martyrdom our one desire.”

Events have shown that the young men who had gathered in Mumbai got the message: SIMI cadre have been involved in almost every Islamist terror strike since, ranging from the Mumbai serial bombings of 2003 and 2006 to attacks in Uttar Pradesh, Karnataka, Andhra Pradesh, and Delhi.

Wednesday’s arrest of SIMI’s general secretary and top jihadist ideologue, Safdar Nagori, should help investigators piece together exactly how these attacks were carried out. Among the questions police in six States will have for Nagori is who funded the networks he ran and how they recruited cadre.

SIMI’s origins
SIMI was formed in April, 1977, as an effort to revitalise the Jamaat-e-Islami’s student networks. From the outset, the organisation made clear it saw Islam as a political project. Muslims comfortable in secular societies, its pamphlets warned, were headed towards damnation.

Elements of SIMI’s leadership were drawn to the practices of General Mohammad Zia-ul-Haq’s regime in Pakistan, and threw their weight behind the Islamists fighting the socialist regime in Afghanistan. Alarmed at the radicalisation of SIMI’s posture, the Jamaat disassociated itself from the organisation in 1982.

But SIMI continued to grow, helped by Islamist West Asia-based organisations such as the World Association of Muslim Youth and the International Islamic Federation of Student Organisation. Their funds helped it establish a welter of magazines, social service enterprises and cultural front-organisations.

Radicalisation
SIMI polemic grew increasingly incendiary in the years after the demolition of the Babri Masjid. In 1996, the organisation put up posters calling on Muslims to follow the path of the eleventh-century conqueror Mahmood Ghaznavi, and appealed to God to help avenge the destruction of mosques in India.

When 25,000 SIMI delegates met in Mumbai in 2001 the organisation for the first time publicly called on its supporters to turn to jihad. Soon after the convention, the al-Qaeda carried out its bombings of New York and Washington D.C. SIMI activists hailed al-Qaeda chief Osama bin-Laden as a “true mujahid.”

In an April, 2001, interview, Nagori, propelled to office by his pro-jihad stance, defended violence. “When an entire community finds itself collectively persecuted,” he said, the cry for jihad is given.” “One is forced to revolt, take to arms,” he said, claiming democratic options had been exhausted.

Nagori made bizarre claims to devalue India’s secular-democratic tradition. For example, he asserted Prime Minister Jawaharlal Nehru “wanted Muslims to recognise Ghulam Ahmed Qadaini [a heterodox preacher considered heretic by conservatives] as our Prophet. He was forcing us to alter our religious belief.”

Turning to terror
From the autumn of 2000, SIMI cadre drawn by Nagori’s network had began training with the Hizb ul-Mujahideen in Jammu and Kashmir. At least three Jalgaon residents — Sheikh Asif Supdu, Sheikh Khalid Iqbal and Sheikh Mohammad Hanif — are believed to have died in shootouts with Indian troops near Kishtwar.

Survivors of the training went on to participate in several major jihadist operations. In July, 2001, for example, police forces in Maharashtra, Andhra Pradesh, Uttar Pradesh and Delhi arrested 23 SIMI-linked terrorists. Four of those held turned out to have trained in Kishtwar.

Organisations such as the Lashkar-e-Taiba, the Jaish-e-Mohammad and the Harkat ul-Jihad-e-Islami also drew on SIMI cadre for their operations. Mohammad Sabahuddin, arrested last month for his role in attacks carried out in Bangalore and Uttar Pradesh, was a SIMI member — as was his key lieutenant, Fahim Ansari.

Will these networks survive Nagori’s arrest? Given their transnational linkages, the answer is most likely yes. Still, political Islamists opposed to SIMI’s turn to violence have been fighting to marginalise the jihadists in its ranks. Wednesday’s arrest will, most likely, help their cause.
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India-Pakistan
Lashkar men's arrest averted strike on BSE
2008-03-28
A group of Lashkar-e-Taiba operatives, arrested in Uttar Pradesh last month, were just days away from executing an attack on the Bombay Stock Exchange (BSE), police sources have told The Hindu. Investigators say Fahim Ahmed Ansari, who was arrested last month along with seven other suspects, planned to travel from Rampur to Mumbai in mid-February with two specially trained Pakistanis who were to carry out the strike.

Both fidayeen, Imran Shehzad from Bhimber in Pakistan-occupied Kashmir and Mohammad Farooq Bhatti from Gujranwala in Punjab, had carried out the New Year-eve assault on a Central Reserve Police Force training camp in Rampur, Uttar Pradesh. Having survived the high-risk attack, the two men were tasked to execute a similar strike on the BSE.

Officials believe Shehzad and Bhatti could have claimed dozens of lives as guards at the BSE are neither trained nor equipped to prevent a fidayeen-type strike. Typically, fidayeen storm the gates of premises using grenades, following it up with the indiscriminate firing from assault rifles — a tactic used with effect at Rampur and in dozens of similar operations in Jammu and Kashmir.

Lashkar cells have made repeated plans to hit the BSE in the past. In 2004, for example, Javed Sheikh and Manzoor Ahmed Chilloo are believed to have planned a fidayeen strike. However, the Lashkar succeeded in attacking the exchange during the 1993 serial bombing of Mumbai that claimed over 250 lives.

The owner of a small-scale paper-envelope manufacturing business, Ansari is believed to have been recruited by the Lashkar during a visit to Dubai in 2003. A one-time activist of the proscribed Students Islamic Movement of India, he received advanced weapons and spycraft training at Lashkar camps in Pakistan over the next four years.

Uttar Pradesh police officials say Ansari returned to India through Kathmandu in late 2007. He stayed at the Sunlight Guest House from November 28 to December 10 before renting a room off Falkland Road. Ansari then secured a driving licence under the alias Samir Sheikh and enrolled himself as a student at a computer institute near the BSE. All three BSE assault-team volunteers held Pakistani passports, which they hoped would enable them to escape through Nepal.

Bangalore connection
Uttar Pradesh authorities say the three men operated under the direct command of Bihar-born Mohammad Sabahuddin, one of the Lashkar’s seniormost Indian operatives. Sabahuddin in turn reported to a Pakistan-based commander code-named Muzammil, the man believed to have overall charge of the organisation’s offensive operations in India outside of Jammu and Kashmir.

Like Ansari, who was a one-time SIMI activist, Sabahuddin also trained at Lashkar camps from 2003 under the tutelage of Muzammil. In mid-2005, investigators say, he returned to India via Dhaka and Kathmandu, travelling on a Pakistani passport. Posing as a medical student, he proceeded to rent a house in Bangalore and study potential targets in the city.

IISc convention
Sabahuddin was eventually drawn by the publicity surrounding the Indian Institute of Science’s 2005 convention. Observing that the institute had almost no security cover, he decided a single terrorist would be able to shoot at delegates. Lashkar leaders then despatched a Pakistani fidayeen code-named Hamza, whom Sabahuddin had earlier seen working in Muzammil’s office, to execute the strike. Identical tactics were used to stage the Rampur attacks. Investigators have found that Sabahuddin’s group at first planned to target a military convoy near the headquarters of the Central Army Command at Lucknow. However, these plans were dropped after the group determined the attackers would have a low chance of success.
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India-Pakistan
Six militants involved in attacks on IISc, CRPF camp held in Uttar Pradesh
2008-02-11
Six Lashkar-e-Taiba (LeT) terrorists, who were involved in the terror attacks on the CRPF Group Centre in Rampur and the Indian Institute of Science, Bangalore, were arrested in Rampur and here late on Saturday night and early hours of Sunday by the Special Task Force (STF) of the Uttar Pradesh Police.

While eight persons, including seven CRPF personnel, were killed in the January 1 Rampur attack, one scientist died and few others injured in the Bangalore attack on December 29, 2005 during a seminar in the J.N. Tata auditorium.

Fahim Ahmed Ansari alias Abu Zaraar alias Saquib, Mohammad Sharif alias Mohammad Anwar and Jang Bahadur alias Baba were arrested in Rampur around 12.15 a.m. on Sunday and Mohammad Sabahuddin alias Abu Qasim alias Sameer Singh, Amar Singh alias Abu Jaar and Abu Osama alias Aavesh, were detained at the Charbagh Railway Station tempo stand here around 6.30 a.m.

Uttar Pradesh Director-General of Police Vikram Singh said Pakistan nationals Amar Singh alias Abu Zaar and Abu Osama, who played a major role in the Rampur and Bangalore attacks, planned terror strikes at Churchgate in Mumbai, the Bombay Stock Exchange and the Army convoys in Rampur and Bareilly.

Mr. Singh said the Bangalore and Mumbai police were informed about the arrests and a joint interrogation would be held soon. He, however, denied that the militants planned to target VVIPs.

Initial interrogation showed that before the Rampur attack, the ultras were given training in intelligence gathering and handling explosives for about a month by Pakistan’s Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI).

Reconnaissance was done by Jang Bahadur alias Baba. Mohammad Sharif, Mohammad Sabahuddin and Abu Saama killed the seven CRPF personnel sitting around a fireplace and hurled grenades, while Abu Zaar provided the cover fire.

Of the three arrested here, Mohammad Sabahuddin revealed his links to the Bangalore attack.

A one-time resident of Madhubani district in Bihar, he was trained by the ISI and LeT in Pakistan before settling down in Patna.

In 2004, he met Lashkar commander Abdul Aziz, who asked him to take a room on rent in Bangalore and inform the LeT chief.

He enrolled himself as a student in a college in Bangalore and rented a one-room house near the college. Acting on instructions, he went to Kathmandu and came back with Hamza, who led the attack on the IISc on the second day of the convention.
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