Security agencies have not been able to “independently verify” reports that Shafi Armar, the Islamic State’s chief recruiter in the Indian subcontinent, was killed in a suicide attack on Syrian Democratic Forces in Syria’s Raqqa, the terror group’s de facto capital and last stronghold.
A message released in Arabic by the IS-backed Amaq news agency said that an Indian fighter named Abu Yusuf al-Hindi was killed while “carrying out a suicide bombing on SDF in Raqqa”. The message also mentioned another name — Abu Fahad Kariteen.
As per the records of Indian agencies, Yusuf al-Hindi is a nom de guerre of Armar. An official said that Yusuf al-Hindi was also the online identity of Mohammad Sajid alias Bada Sajid, a former Indian Mujahideen (IM) operative from Azamgarh in U.P. said to have been killed two years back in a drone strike by U.S.-led coalition forces in Syria.
In May 2016, ten months after agencies confirmed his death, Sajid and five other Indians featured in a propaganda video shot near Syria’s Lake Homs. In the video they called on Indian Muslim men to travel to IS-held territories to avenge “Babri Masjid [demolition] and the killings of Muslims in Kashmir, Gujarat and Muzaffarnagar”.
According to the National Investigation Agency, Armar, a resident of Bhatkal in Karnataka and a former member of IM, was made the terror group’s “media chief” last year and he oversaw recruitments not only from India but across the world.
Both Armar and Sajid fled to Pakistan after the 2008 serial bombs blasts along with other IM members. Armar and his elder brother Sultan floated the Ansar-ul-Tawhid with the help of the al-Qaeda. The AuT later pledged allegiance to the IS. The IM leaders are believed to have travelled to Syria from the Afghanistan-Pakistan border in 2014. Sultan was killed in a drone strike in Syria in 2015.
“The message has been put out on some news agency run by a terrorist organisation. We have not got any confirmation from either Syria or U.S.-led coalition forces who are active there. Even his family in Bhatkal have not been informed,” said a senior Home Ministry official.
Sectarian violence
According to the NIA, Armar’s name cropped up during investigations of at least 35 men arrested across the country for alleged links to the IS. Armar, who was designated as global terrorist by the U.S. in June, has an Interpol Red Corner notice pending against him.
An NIA charge sheet filed against him in 2016 said that he allegedly instigated recruits to target not only Hindu political leaders, government officials and RSS workers, but Shia Muslims as well. An NIA official said that the IS not only wanted to create communal tension but also stoke sectarian violence in the country.
