Investigators have found no direct link between the Hyderabad woman who was deported from the UAE and militant outfit Islamic State (IS), highly placed sources said.
The woman identified as Afsha Jabeen, a mother of three, was deported for allegedly recruiting men on behalf of the IS. Sources said though she was largely into motivating people to convert to Islam, any direct link with the IS leadership has not emerged so far. Jabeen alias Nicole Joseph was arrested on September 11 from the Hyderabad airport.
She was hugely popular on social networking site Facebook and the accounts she ran had over 60,000 followers, informed sources said. The Facebook groups were closed ones and before she was arrested, Jabeen deleted most of the content. She was running pages like ‘Islam vs Christianity,’ ‘Who is real Islamist?’ ‘Daula Islamic’ and ‘Real Jihadi.’
A senior government official said, “she was mostly into conversion and radicalisation but to say that she was doing so at the behest of IS would be exaggerated."
Moihuddin was in contact with Jabeen and he planned to travel to Syria via Turkey with her.
“There were others who she was in touch with and she motivated them to travel to Syria but Moihuddin told her categorically that he would not proceed without her. It was due to this reason that he planned to go to Dubai first and meet her there, before both of them went to Syria together. She had no such intention however,” said the official.
Moihuddin was arrested under various sections of the Unlawful Activities Prevention Act (UAPA) and since Jabeen’s name cropped up during his interrogation, she was deported from the UAE.
Incidentally, a DU graduate who was stopped from joining the IS by her father who is in the Indian Army has not been booked. A senior official said, “there was not enough evidence against the DU woman to arrest her under the UAPA. We have decided to take a graded approach and in cases where there is a possibility of counselling we do that. In Jabeen’s case we have enough evidence procured from her laptop and also supporting evidence like Moihuddin’s statement.”
