ISIS Team Nabbed In City Guided By Syrian Handlers

The National Investigation Agency (NIA) today said that the eight ISIS sympathisers who were charge sheeted by it for planning to carry out a series of attacks in Hyderabad a few months ago, used the Google Maps App to survey police stations in the city.

The 8 persons are Muzaffar Hussain Rizwan, Mohammed Ibrahim Yazdani, Mohammed Ilyas Yazdani, Habeeb Mohammed, Abdullah Bin Ahmed Al Amoodi, Mohammed Attaullah Rahman, Abdul Rawoof and Yasir Naimatullah.

Upon realizing that carrying out a recon on police stations manually would land them in jail, they started collecting the necessary information through Google Maps. Digital documents about three GPS coordinates were recovered from Rizwan, who had the task of surveying PSs, the agency said in its charge sheet filed in a special court in Cherlapally a few days ago. The group hatched a criminal conspiracy to wage a war against the Central government by collecting weapons and explosives. They planned to target prominent persons, religious places, malls, markets, public properties and sensitive buildings in Hyderabad and other cities across the country, it added.

Officials said that some of them who had tried to go to Syria and join the Islamic State along with their families were unsuccessful. And their Syria-based handler told them that it would not be possible for them to go to the country, and instead asked them to work towards establishing the Caliphate wherever they were from.

This was also reflected in the speeches of ISIS spokesperson Abu Muhammed-al-Adnani to the group members. He asked them not to use Facebook and WhatsApp for discussing their ideology. He also instructed them not to search for ISIS on the Internet and lead a normal life as a cover story. Adnani also warned them not to show any information about the group to outsiders, and advised them to use the Chatsecure mobile app for group communication.

Apart from using codes, these eight persons used encrypted lines and ChatSecure to communicate among themselves, the charge sheet said