The Hindu : Front Page : Uttar Pradesh bombings mark new phase of Islamist terror

Online edition of India's National Newspaper
Sunday, Nov 25, 2007
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Uttar Pradesh bombings mark new phase of Islamist terror

Praveen Swami

E-mail sent to TV stations a political manifesto for terror cells

The Indian Mujahideen sent the mail from a purpose-generated address
‘Court bombings were carried out because police arrested two innocent groups’

NEW DELHI: Investigators believe an e-mail sent minutes after the serial court bombings in Uttar Pradesh began is a first-of-its kind manifesto for Islamist terror cells operating across India.

Issued by an until-now unknown organisation, the Indian Mujahideen, the e-mail was sent from guru_alHindi@yahoo.fr, a purpose-generated address created on November 22, to several national television stations.

Arguing that the court bombings were carried out because the Uttar Pradesh police arrested “two innocent groups and frame[d] them in fake charges” after which “lawyer[s] of these places beaten those innocent group members,” the Indian Mujahideen mail insisted that its members “are not any foreign mujahideen nor even we have any attachment with neighbouring countries agency like ISI, LET, HUJI etc.”

Starting out with an invocation from the Quran calling on believers to fight impiety, the e-mail seeks to legitimise Islamist terrorism in India. Much of its content revolves around Hindu fundamentalist attacks on Muslims. The 1992-93 pogrom in Mumbai and the 2002 carnage in Gujarat, the e-mail states, “forced us to take strong stand against this injustice and all other wounds given by the idol worshipers of India.”

However, the e-mail concludes: “This is not the war between two communities, but this is war for civilisation. We want to empower the society from injustice, corruption etc. which is prevailing in the society nowadays. Only Islam has the power to establish a civilised society and this could be only possible in Islamic rule, which could be achieved by only one path JIHAD [sic.].”

SIMI links

Similar language peppered literature were produced by the proscribed Students Islamic Movement of India (SIMI). At a 2000 convention in Mumbai, the SIMI leaders called on their cadre to participate in the jihad against India.

A year later, SIMI put up posters in several towns calling on Muslims to avenge Hindu fundamentalist attacks by emulating 11th-century conqueror, Mahmud Ghaznavi.

Interestingly, one of the co-founders of the Lashkar-e-Taiba in India, Nalagonda resident Azam Ghauri, had set up an organisation with aims, and a name, similar to the Indian Mujahideen. Ghauri’s Indian Muslim Mohammadi Mujahideen carried out several bombings in Andhra Pradesh in 1999, targeting leaders of right-wing Hindu groups and a movie theatre it claimed propagated immorality.

Ghauri is known to have met SIMI cadre – including some involved in recent terror strikes – for political discussions at a 1999 convention in Aurangabad. Several SIMI cadre present at the convention went on to engage in terrorist activity. Aurangabad resident Shakeel Ahmed Sheikh, for example, was held for his role in an abortive operation to bomb Gujarat in 2005.

At least one Harkat ul-Jihad-e-Islami operative is known to have used the pseudonym ‘Guru’ in the past. According to the interrogation records of HUJI operative Jalaluddin Mollah, a HUJI delivered a large consignment of military-grade explosive to an operative using the code-names ‘Guru’ and ‘Rocky’ in New Delhi’s Jama Masjid area shortly before Diwali in 2005.

Mollah, who used the code-name ‘Babu Bhai,’ told his interrogators that he had trained with ‘Guru’ at a HUJI-run facility in Bangaldesh, and later accompanied him to Karachi. Investigators were able to determine that ‘Guru’ had stayed in New Delhi’s Seelampuri area – not far from the Laxmi Nagar neighbourhood from where the e-mail was sent – but failed to make a definitive identification.

Noting that ‘Guru’ was common in Delhi argot for any organisational superior or professional colleague, investigators, however, warned against concluding that the still-unidentified HUJI operative had sent the Indian Mujahideen e-mail. “What the language does show,” one police official said, “is that whosoever wrote it was familiar with SIMI literature. We’re still far from identifying a suspect.”

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