Students’ group in Pune spreading Laden’s ideology?—ToI –9.5.11

Sachin Parashar | TNN

New Delhi: Al-Qaida is known for its franchisees in Somalia, Yemen and northern Africa but there is also a group in India which is actively propagating the terror group’s ideology across the country. According to intelligence and security agencies, this group, Islamic Students Congregation, played host in Pune in 2007 to a Sudanese al-Qaida leader who came to India to study the possibility of carrying out terror attacks in the country.
    Confirming this information, former joint intelligence committee chief S D Pradhan, who was then heading the joint intelligence task force under M K Narayanan, told TOI that this congregation is actively spreading al-Qaida’s philosophy including material on now slain terror kingpin Osama bin Laden. The congregation formed in Pune comprises mainly Arab students.
    “While there is no evidence yet of this group planning to carry out a terror strike in India, they are clandestinely spreading al-Qaida ideology in the form of CDs and other al-Qaida literature. It is still very much active and remains a security threat,” said Pradhan, a former deputy national security advisor.
    This congregation first came under the scanner in 2007 when security agencies learnt about its links with al-Qaida in the form of the month-long visit by the Sudanese al-Qaida leader.
    Indian officials, in fact, learnt about the visit months after his departure from India. This visit by the al-Qaida leader, who came to Pune on a fake identity, alarmed Indian officials as it followed a disclosure by three al-Qaida operatives arrested in Algeria in August 2006 that Pune was on al-Qaida’s hit list.
    The Islamic Students Congregation has carried out its activities mainly from Pune but has also held meetings in Bangalore, Mumbai and Hyderabad. Security agencies were taken aback by this group also because around the same time, they were trying to come to terms with the reality of LeTs growing links with al-Qaida.
    LeT has now come to be known as a manifestation of al-Qaida but before 2004, there was no intelligence to suggest that LeT was working in tandem with the Osama-led terror syndicate.
    It was only in 2004 that we first got information about al-Qaida terrorists, an all Arab team of 16 men, receiving training from LeT in a terror camp in Afghanistan’s Paktia province,” said an official.