Daijiworld Media Network-Dubai (RJP)
Dubai, Nov 23: Dubai police have detained a person from Bhatkal for suspected online activities linked to the Islamic State (IS).
Adnan Hasan Damudi (33) from Bhatkal is the person arrested.
It is alleged that Adnan Hasan Damudi, a suspected former SIMI member, acted as an online recruiter and propaganda agent for the IS. Damudi was being tracked for over a year by Indian authorities for suspected online activities linked to the IS.
Damudi, a commerce graduate from Karnataka University in Dharwad, went to Dubai in 2012 for employment and was last known to be employed as an assistant delivery coordinator at the World Trade Centre in Dubai. Sources said that he was detained a couple of months ago and will deported to India soon.
Since the detention, Damudi’s online activities have come to a halt. The Twitter account allegedly linked to Damudi, with the handle @AdnanDamudi, has been defunct over the last year along with his YouTube subscription. The Indian and UAE phone numbers provided by Damudi on online forums are also inactive.
Damudi’s alleged IS links came to the fore in the course of an investigation by the Telangana Police into an attempt last year to recruit four Hyderabad youths. Damudi allegedly influenced the four engineering college dropouts to travel to Syria as well as arranged funds for their travel, before the authorities were alerted and the youths detained near Malda in West Bengal and brought back to Hyderabad.
Links with Sultan Armar from Bhatkal and others
Damudi was allegedly also in touch with Sultan Armar from Bhatkal, who was reported by IS-linked websites to have been killed in Kobane in Syria in March this year.
Apart from the four Hyderabad youths, sources say, investigations showed Damudi to be in touch with several other Muslim youths in India. An alleged active participant in online platforms linked to the IS, he was a subscriber a year ago to a YouTube channel operated by controversial Australian pro-IS preacher Robert Musa Cerantonio, who was deported to Australia from the Philippines last July.
Damudi allegedly put the youths in touch with Sultan Armar, who was suspected then to be on the Afghanistan-Pakistan border. Investigators say Armar spoke to the four Hyderabad youths via Skype, and promised to help them join the IS. Sources say it was Armar who then directed the four to travel to West Bengal, assuring that they would be taken to Dhaka from where arrangements for further travel would be made by his associates.
After they were detained in Malda by the Hyderabad police, no case was filed against the youths and their names were not publicised in an effort to instil confidence in families to report youths targeted by jihadist recruiters.
Presently the exact location Damudi’s detention in Dubai is not known.