Musa interrogation: IS planning to strengthen base in India

Masiuddin alias Musa, the arrested Islamic State operative, on Friday revealed that the terror outfit’s immediate plan was to strengthen its base in areas in the country where there is ongoing turmoil due to activities of one or the other terror group.

Musa was interrogated for many hours over two consecutive days by officers of the USA’s Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) till Friday.

The focus of the FBI officers during the marathon interrogation was to extract as much information as possible about the plan chalked out by IS for India and its neighbouring countries.

At the same time, they enquired about one of the top leaders of the outfit Safi Arma, who is also the head of its operations in India.

Musa told FBI officers that Arma’s actual name is Yusuf Al Hind, but he is well-known to all in the terror outfit as Safi Arma.

Sources said the officers came to know from Musa that there are some activists in neighbouring countries who had been in contact both with Musa and Arma. They had plans to enter the country and to work along with Arma to strengthen their base.

After knowing the relevant facts and the locations where IS had decided to galvanise its sympathisers, FBI officers further questioned Musa to know more about the terror outfit’s plan to strengthen its base in the country.

It has been learnt that there were discrepancies in Musa’s statement. However, FBI officers figured out from his intel that IS might have planned to target foreigners visiting the country as certain messages in Musa’s cell phone revealed exchange of dialogues between him and Arma about attacking “white people”.

They further interrogated Musa to know whom was he referring to while talking about “white people”. They also wanted to know for how long Arma had been in-charge after the operations in India and the chief of operations for IS in some other countries.

Sources said that the FBI officers have also got names of some more IS operatives in some other countries who had been in touch with Musa.