A operative of terror outfit Harkat-ul-Jihad al-Islami was on Saturday awarded death penalty in the 2005 Shramjeevi Express train blast case by a local court in Uttar Pradesh.
The Bengaluru police investigating the terror plot in Karnataka may turn to the Interpol to probe conversations between the arrested youths and their handlers overseas. Vicky Nanjappa reports
Bangladeshi security forces on Thursday arrested Moulana Yahiya, chief of banned terror outfit Harkat-ul-Jihad al-Islami, along with two of his accomplices from Kishorganj district. "We have arrested him (Yahiya) today morning," said elite Anti-crime Rapid Action Battalion's intelligence wing chief Lieutenant Colonel Ziaul Ahsan. He said the three were arrested after intercepting a passenger bus in which they were traveling to Kishorganj from Sylhet.
United States authorities have described Pakistan's powerful Inter-Services Intelligence agency as a terrorist organisation and considered it as much of a threat as the Al Qaeda and the Taliban, according to a secret document which also names Lashkar-e-Tayiba, Jaish-e-Mohammed and Harkat-ul-Jihad-al-Islami.
The probe into the alleged plot to target politicians including members of Parliament, members of Legislative Assembly and also some journalists by 15 terror suspects belonging to Lashkar-e-Tayiba and Harkat-ul-Jihad al-Islami who were nabbed by city police, has been handed over to the National Investigative Agency, a top police official said.
While reporting the developments in the recently-busted assassination plot, the media has brazenly stated that many of the men arrested from Bangalore, Hyderabad and Nanded have connections with terror outfit Harkat-ul-Jihad al-Islami.
A Delhi court on Wednesday sentenced a Bangladeshi national and his Kashmiri associate belonging to the banned militant organisation Harkat-Ul-Jihad-al-Islami to life imprisonment for possessing explosives and waging war against the country.
The bulk of the hate messages warning people from north-east India, which originated out of the servers in Pakistan, landed in the hands of groups such as the Islamist organisation Popular Front of India and the Harkat-ul-Jihad-al-Islami, investigators told rediff.com.
Additional Sessions Judge Nivedita Anil Sharma convicted Md Amin Wani and Lutfur Rahman of various offences under the Indian Penal Code, the Unlawful Activities Prevention Act and the Explosive Substances Act.
A huge cache of explosives, which was seized by the Patna police during raids conducted over the weekend, was sent by Bangladesh-based terrorist outfit Harkat-ul-Jihad-al-Islami to the Maoists operating in Jharkhand, say Intelligence Bureau officials."The huge consignment of explosives, firearms, live cartridges and chemicals were brought here from Bangladesh, through the bordering districts of Kishanganj and Purnia, to supply to Maoists," said IB sources.
Jammu and Kashmir police on Friday appealed to media not to carry "speculative" details about the Harkat-ul-Jihad-al-Islami email in connection with the Delhi high court blast.
Investigators on Thursday detained five people, including a cyber cafe owner in Jammu and Kashmir, and questioned another hailing from Bihar as they looked for definite leads into the briefcase bomb blast outside Delhi high court on Wednesday.
Sources revealed that Mohammad Ilyas Kashmiri, the commander of Harkat-ul Jihad al Islami, who was reportedly killed in a United States drone attack in South Waziristan last month, is still alive, DawnNews reported.
The Al Qaeda-linked terror group Harkat-ul-Jihad al-Islami has threatened to attack Pakistan's foreign office, its high commission in India and top diplomats if Islamabad does not stop sharing information about it with New Delhi. HuJI has threatened it will attack the foreign office, the foreign secretary, Pakistan's high commission in New Delhi and High Commissioner Shahid Malik if its demand is not met.
Russia has identified underworld don Dawood Ibrahim and Pakistan-based terror outfits Lashkar-e-Tayiba, Harkat-ul-Jihad-al-Islami and Lashkar-e-Jhangvi as financiers of terrorism through money laundering.
The Mumbai police have launched a massive manhunt for two suspected terrorists who have slipped into the city recently. According to reports by intelligence agencies, they have been sent to the city to carry out disruptive activities and reactivate the dying terror modules in the city.
One more person with alleged links to banned terror outfits Lashkar-e-Taiyba and Harkat-ul-Jihad al-Islami has been nabbed taking the total number of such suspects arrested since August to 15, a top police official said.
The Bengaluru police have arrested one more youth with alleged links to the Lashkar-e-Tayiba and Harkat-ul-Jihad al-Islami as it intensified investigation into terror modules busted in Karnataka, taking the number of those detained in this connection to 13.
The probe by the Bengaluru police in coordination with the special cell of the Delhi police has revealed that the team of 10 persons from the Harkat-ul-Jihad-al-Islami and the Lashkar-e-Tayiba had split into two groups to carry out a series of operations in Karnataka.
Suspecting the hand of Harkat-ul-Jihad al-Islami commander Ilyas Kashmiri in coordinating the suicide strike on the top secret Central Intelligence Agency base in eastern Afghanistan, United States authorities have asked Pakistan to hunt down and extradite the dreaded terrorist.
Bangladesh's two former ministers, who aided banned extremist group the Harkat-ul-Jihad-al Islami in its botched attempt to kill Premier Sheikh Hasina in 2004, also helped the outfit procure arms for use against India, a Dhaka court was told.
It has been reported that three claims of responsibility have been received by the investigating authorities in the wake of the explosion outside the Delhi high court on Wednesday.
An FIR was on Monday filed against two suspected Harkat-ul-Jihad-al-Islami members on charges of violating the Foreigners Act. The FIR was lodged against Mohammad Riyazul Sarkar alias Akash Khan who was arrested on Saturday, besides Mohamma Mahtab Alam, who was in the custody of the Pauakhali police station in the district under the Foreigners Act, Superintendent of Police R K Mishra said.
Ilyas Kashmiri, the head of Harkat-ul Jihad al Islami and Al Qaeda's 313 Brigade, is reportedly alive in spite of being declared killed in an American drone strike on June 3 in South Waziristan.The 'death' of Kashmiri was a source of relief for the United States, Pakistan, India and many other nations across the world. But security officials of the United States and Pakistan have failed to confirm reports of Kashmiri's death and he is reportedly still active.
The needle of suspicion is on the Bangladeshi population in Jaipur after the blasts. Rediff.com checks out the ground realities.
The modus operandi is recruitment of Indian youths by LeT and Bangladesh-based Harkat-ul-Jihad-al-Islami for training in Pakistan and Pakistan-occupied Kashmir and then sending them back to India.
A Pakistani-origin taxi driver, with suspected links to Harkat-ul-Jihad-al Islami chief Ilyas Kashmiri, has been indicted on charges of "knowingly" attempting to aid the Al Qaeda.
The chief of Bangladesh-based Harkat-ul-Jihad-al-Islami was on Tuesday sentenced to death along with two of his associates for a 2004 grenade attack on the then British envoy to Dhaka that killed three people. A trial court tribunal set up in Sylhet, 190 km northeast of Dhaka, sentenced HuJI leader Mufti Abdul Hannan and two other members of the terrorist outfit Shahid Shahidul Alam and Delwar Hossain Ripon to death by hanging.
With the Lashkar-e-Tayiba taking a back seat as far as India operations are concerned for the time being, it looks like dreaded terror outfit Harkat-ul-Jihad-al-Islami -- which operates primarily out of Bangladesh -- is planning on taking the centre stage.
The Harkat-ul-Jihad-al Islami, which has been maintaining a low-profile for some time, is planning a second terror attack on Ajmer, according to Intelligence Bureau sources.Intelligence Bureau sources told rediff.com that the HuJI, an offshoot of the dreaded Laskhar-e-Tayiba, plans to send across a double message through this operation. The police crackdown on the Bangladeshi immigrants following the Jaipur blasts has not gone down too well with the outfit.
To divert part of the international attention away from it and project the increase in jihadi terrorism as a sub-continental and not a purely Pakistani phenomenon, the ISI is likely to accelerate this process of giving Al Qaeda-inspired International Islamic Front, of which all these organisationals are members, a sub-continental visage and clothing and project the so-called Kashmir issue as a root cause of this expanding phenomenon.
Bangladeshi officials said after questioning HuJI chief Mufty Hannan, they were 'almost sure' that the duo behind several terror attacks in the country had fled to India. The twins were arrested with explosives from New Delhi railway station in February 2006.
The SIT has secured important leads about the role of Harkat-ul-Jihad al Islami's south India chief Mohammed Abdul Shahid alias Bilal.
If we do not get out of our denial mode and act firmly against the extremist and anti-national elements, a 9/11 is waiting to happen in our homeland.
Al Qaeda not only looks upon India as a close associate of the US similar to the UK, but also as providing favourable conditions for its overseas operations directed against US nationals and interests in Indian territory.
The ISI's new terror matrix comprises three major terrorist groups, at least half-a-dozen big and small front organisations with extremist ideology, spanning three countries.
Fears of a possible attempt by Al Qaeda-linked terrorists in Pakistan to hijack an Indian passenger jet and crash it into a British city may have prompted the UK to raise its terror alert to its second-highest level, a media report claimed on Sunday.
Bangladesh based Harkat-ul-Jihad-al-Islami, a militant outfit responsible for a series of terror attacks in the country and India was trying to mobilise foreign funds by setting up a charity to carry out subversive activities under its garb.
The IB says Al Qaeda suspects that the growing proximity between India and the US will prove fatal for its operations in Afghanistan and with its threat it hopes to slow down Indian designs of helping the US there.