Linkages between Jihadis of Singapore and India

According to the Delhi Police, Haroon Rashid, an Indian mechanical engineer, who is alleged to be a member of the Pakistan-based Lashkar-e-Toiba (LeT), was arrested by them at the Delhi airport on May 16, 2005, on his arrival from Singapore where he had reportedly gone to do a training course. 

In a press briefing on his arrest, the Delhi Police claimed that he had links to an LeT plot for a terrorist strike against the Kanpur-based plant of the Hindustan Aeronautics Limited (HAL). The police gave the following details relating to him: 

• Haroon Rashid (24) alias Farooq, is a mechanical engineer, who used to work with the HAL for over two years. 
  
• He was a member of an LeT module, which had planned to attack the Indian Military Academy at Dehra Dun, but the plot was thwarted with the Arrest of two terrorists and the killing of three others during an encounter in a South-West Delhi area on March 5, 2005. 
  
• He hails from Siwan in Bihar. He is believed to have returned to India to re-organise the LeT module that was neutralised after the March encounter. 
  
• Investigations revealed that at least twice Rashid had transferred large amounts of money to the terrorists involved in the March 5 encounter. 
  
• Rashid had resigned from HAL, Kanpur, in December 2004, to join a Singapore-based company and went to Singapore to do a 22-week preparatory course for graduate mechanical engineers in the Singapore Maritime Academy. 
  
• During his stay in Singapore, he had allegedly passed on instructions and money from one Abdul Aziz, described by the Police as a Pakistan-based top LeT operative and head of the module, to its members in Delhi. 
  
• He had been given 14,000 Singapore dollars (about Rs 3.6 lakh) of which he had already passed on 4,000 dollars to Shams (one of the killed militants) and the others in India. 
  
• The Police claimed that though they knew about Rashid's activities, they did not raid his house in Siwan to avoid creating any suspicion in his mind, which might have prevented him from returning from Singapore. When he arrived in Delhi by an Indian Airlines flight at the end of his preparatory course, he was arrested. 
  
• According to the Police, he revealed on interrogation that Shams had visited the HAL campus in Kanpur and stayed with him there to study the security details and plan a 'fidayeen' (suicide) attack. Later, the module had apparently decided to attack the IMA first. Rashid, who had graduated in Engineering from the Aligarh Muslim University (AMU), had come in contact with Shams and another key member of the module, Doctor alias Amir in the university hostel in 2001. 

This is the third piece of evidence coming to notice since 2002 relating to possible linkages between jihadi terrorists operating in India, Pakistan and the countries of South-East Asia. 

According to a White Paper issued by the Singapore authorities on January 7, 2003, on the Jemaah Islamiya (JI), a terrorist organization of South-East Asia, seven of the 31 suspected members of the JI arrested by them in December 2001, and September 2002, were of Indian origin. Singapore, like Malaysia, has a large number of persons of Indian origin, who had migrated there from South India, mainly Tamil Nadu. The fact that some of these migrants had joined the JI indicated that the JI was apparently targeting this migrant community in its recruitment drive for volunteers to carry out terrorist activities against possible American and other targets in Singapore and other countries of the region. 

However, these arrests did not indicate any linkages between the arrested persons of Indian origin and jihadi terrorist organizations operating in India. 

The second piece of evidence came in 2003, when the Singapore authorities were reported to have arrested two Singapore nationals who, according to them, had undergone training in a LeT camp in Pakistan. This gave the first clear indication of a link between the JI and the Pakistan-based LeT. "The Hindu", the daily newspaper of Chennai, quoted the then Singapore Deputy Prime Minister, Lee Hsien Loong, as saying: "They were involved with the Lashkar-e-Toiba, the Kashmiri group…" 

The arrest of Rashid and the details regarding him as given by the Delhi Police provide corroboratory evidence of the apparent use of the Singapore territory by the LeT for maintaining contacts with its cells in India and for passing on money and instructions to them from Pakistan. The details given by the Police so far do not indicate whether Rashid had any contacts with the JI during his stay in Singapore. It is also not clear whether he went to Singapore to do a training course on his own or on the instructions of the LeT. If he had gone on the instructions of the LeT headquarters in Pakistan, what was the purpose of the LeT in instructing him to join the course? 

These are aspects, which need further investigation by the Indian Police authorities in collaboration with their counterparts in Singapore. Both the LeT and the JI have links with Al Qaeda.

Courtesy: South Asia Analysis group, New Delhi, Paper no. 1416, June 13, 2005.

The writer is Research Intern, Observer Research Foundation.

* Views expressed in this article are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect those of Observer Research Foundation.

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