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OpIndia July 18,2020 The Islamic State (ISIS) has reportedly threatened to deface the offices of a nationalist Kerala-based channel, Janam TV. Besides, it threatened to kill all employees working at the said channel. In light of the threats given by the terrorist outfit, State police chief Loknath Behra has ordered the police department to enhance the security at the offices of Janam TV. ISIS sent threats to Janam TV over Instagram The Kerala unit of Islamic State (ISIS) has reportedly sent threats to the channel over Instagram. The terror outfit intimidated the employees of the channel to convert to the religion of Islam or get exterminated. The message read, “Mujahideen’s Message to Janam TV! We invite you to convert to Islam or else get ready to say goodbye to the world and face Allah’s wrath and punishment.” As per reports, Janam Tv has seen a drastic rise in TRP ratings and now features in top five Malayalam news channels in the State. The said ...

The Indian Express Anju Gupta, IPS Officer May 08,2020 Following a coordinated suicide attack on a gurdwara in Kabul on March 25, in which several Sikhs were killed, Daesh (ISIS) claimed its second ever attack on Indian interests in Afghanistan. Identifying the lone attacker as Abu Khalid al Hindi (Muhammad Muhsin from Kerala, who had gone to the Gulf in 2018), ISIS termed it “revenge for Muslims of Kashmir”. Subsequently, Afghan security forces arrested the Amir of Islamic State Khurasan Province (ISKP, the ISIS branch in Af-Pak) —a Pakistani national, Aslam Farooqui Akhunzada — and others, including Kashmiri militant Aijaz Ahangar, wanted for two decades. ISKP posted a picture and a video of an Afghan officer in their custody, and pictures of his “beheading” on May 4. The Afghan Taliban called Aslam a “stooge” of Afghan forces, but his organic links in the region have been known even before ISIS was born. The chain of events does necessitate closer scrutiny of th...

By Paul Cruickshank, CNN Terrorism analyst Updated 1827 GMT (0227 HKT) January 29, 2020 (CNN)ISIS has begun reasserting itself in Iraq and Syria under a new leader assessed to be an Iraqi operative who was a driving force behind the terror group's genocide against the Yazidi people, according to a report submitted to the UN Security Council which was made public on Wednesday. The wide-ranging report, compiled by the UN Monitoring Team that tracks the global jihadi terror threat, refers to the group by its alternate name stating the "Islamic State in Iraq and the Levant (ISIL), following its loss of territory, has begun to reassert itself in both the Syrian Arab Republic and Iraq, mounting increasingly bold insurgent attacks, calling and planning for the breakout of ISIL fighters in detention facilities and exploiting weaknesses in the security environment of both countries." It has been clear for some time that one reason for ISIS's resilience is its dee...

The Week  July 15, 2019 By Lakshmi Subramanian The arrests were made after continuous searches and raids in TN in the past month The National Investigation Agency arrested 14 people on suspicion of having links to ISIS in different parts of Tamil Nadu. The 14 suspects are expected to be taken to Delhi for questioning on Monday. The arrests have been made after continuous searches and raids in Tamil Nadu in the past one month. In Coimbatore, a total of seven persons with suspected links to ISIS have been arrested. They allegedly had plans to carry out suicide attacks, which were averted. In Chennai, four people have been arrested, who were allegedly having attack plans. The other accused were arrested from Madurai, Theni and Nagapattinam. Sources claimed that the inmates of Puzhal Prison in Chennai are also being probed in this regard. In June, the NIA had conducted raids in several places in Coimbatore to ascertain links to the group that carried out the suicide bomb a...

The Quint July 15, 2019 AHMED ALI FAYYAZ Al Qaeda Chief Ayman Al Zawahiri’s 14-minute video that was released on Wednesday, 10 July, asking his cadre and followers to inflict “unrelenting blows” on the Indian security forces and the government in Kashmir, has little scope of replacing the three-decades-long Pakistan-controlled conventional insurgency in the Valley. It could however, eventually prove to be a game-changer – for the worse. Significantly, there has been no reaction to Al Zawahiri’s appeal either from the Valley’s separatist leadership, or from its intellectual support structure which has been vociferously asserting through write-ups, speeches and tweets, that the pan-Islamic extremist groups like Al Qaeda and ISIS have no room in Kashmir. They have been emphatically projecting the separatist-militant combo as an “indigenous political movement with only the moral support from Pakistan”. Even as a group of local lawyers had performed Osama Bin Laden’s namaz-e-ja...

Dawn May11,2019 The militant Islamic State (IS) claimed for the first time that it has established a “province” in India, after a clash in the contested Kashmir region killed a militant with alleged ties to the group. IS's  Amaq News Agency  late on Friday announced the new province, that it called “Wilayah of Hind”, in a statement that also claimed IS inflicted casualties on Indian army soldiers in the town of Amshipora in the Shopian district of Kashmir. The IS statement corresponds with an Indian police statement on Friday that a militant called Ishfaq Ahmad Sofi was killed in an encounter in Shopian. IS's statement establishing the new province appears to be designed to bolster its standing after the group was driven from its self-styled “caliphate” in Iraq and Syria in April, where at one point it controlled thousands of miles of territory. IS has stepped up hit-and-run raids and suicide attacks, including taking responsibility for the Easter Sunday...

Business Standard April 15, 2019 Press Trust of India The  Islamic State  terror group is plotting deadly attacks across Europe along the lines of the one carried out on a concert hall in Paris in which 130 people were killed four years ago, a leading British newspaper has reported. The November 2015 Paris attacks were a series of coordinated terror attacks in Paris and the city's northern suburb of Saint-Denis. In the attacks, three suicide bombers struck outside the Stade de France stadium during a football match, followed by several   mass shootings   and a suicide bombing at restaurants. A total of 130 people people were killed at the Bataclan concert hall. Documents seen by The Sunday Times reveal detailed plans of terrorist attacks in Europe and the Middle East, funded and controlled by  ISIS  leaders who are "actively planning" to recreate the Paris-style attack of November 2015. "The operations in Europe are only a fraction of...

The Atlantic Dated March 24, 2019 All ISIS Has Left Is Money. Lots of It. BEIRUT—If you’re looking to transfer money here, there’s a chance you will be directed to Abu Shawkat. He works out of a small office in a working-class suburb of the Lebanese capital, but won’t give you its exact location. Instead, he’ll direct you to a nearby alleyway, and whether he shows up depends on whether he likes the look of you. Abu Shawkat—not his real name—is part of the  hawala  system, which is often used to transfer cash between places where the banking system has broken down or is too expensive for some to access. If he agrees to do business, you’ll set a password and he will take your cash, then provide you with the contact information of a  hawala  broker in the city where your money is headed. Anyone who offers that specific password to that particular broker will get the funds. Thus, cash can travel across borders without any inquiry into who is sending or r...

NDTV Decmber 05, 2018 Sneha Mary Koshy ,   Jayanth Jacob THIRUVANANTHAPURAM:  A five-member team of French investigators arrived in Kerala to interrogate an alleged ISIS terror operative Subahani Haja Moideen in connection with the 2015 Paris terror attack, sources said. Facilitated by the National Investigative Agency, the officials of the French anti-terrorism agency will question Subahani Haja Moideen currently lodged in Viyyur Central jail in Kerala, news agency PTI reported. The team that arrived in the country after an NIA court in Kochi granted them permission to interrogate Subahani Haja Moideen will be in the state till Friday. He is from Thodupuzha in Kerala. The NIA probe had indicated that that Moideen could have known the terrorists who carried out the Paris terror strike in 2015. The attacks by gunmen and suicide bombers hit a theatre, a major stadium, restaurants and bars and almost simultaneously had left 130 people dead and hundreds wounded. ...

DAWN Anwar Iqbal September 25, 2018 WASHINGTON: The United States has stopped publicising body counts of Taliban and IS fighters, a decision indicative of major change in policy of forcing the Taliban to participate in the US-backed peace process. Diplomatic sources in Washington point out that decision to discontinue highlighting enemy deaths in Afghanistan coincides with renewed efforts to encourage direct talks between US and Taliban officials. In July, US diplomats held face-to-face talks with Taliban officials in Qatar, the first in many years. The New York Times described the meeting as “a reversal of a longstanding US policy” of insisting that Afghan government officials must participate in any talks with the Taliban. Last week, a Taliban delegation arrived in Dubai for talks with Red Cross officials for securing the release of their prisoners in Afghan and US custody, apparently with US endorsement. This is one of key Taliban demands for joining the Afghan peace...

OpIndia July11,2018 OpIndia Staff Even though he was arrested in September 2017, the details of the operations were only recently confirmed to  Indian Express  by diplomatic and intelligence sources.The common man seldom hears about India’s unsung heroes. But an unprecedented act by the counter-intelligence operation has saved the lives of many, by preventing an Afghan operative of the Islamic State (IS) from executing suicide-bombing in New Delhi,  Indian Express  has  reported . Described as a son of a ‘wealthy businessman’, the Afghan operative was directed to spend his time in the national capital, and even took an admission in a private engineering college, on the outskirts of New Delhi. To ensure that they keep a grasp over the targeted Afghan bomber, security agencies had deployed 80 security personnel for “physical surveillance” during one crucial month of the operation. The operation began when the Research & Analysis Wing (R...