Kuwaiti who wired $1,000 to Kalyan youth to join IS held

NEW DELHI: Law enforcement agencies in Kuwait have arrested a person for allegedly funding terrorist groups and providing financial help to a youth from Maharashtra’

NEW DELHI: Law enforcement agencies in Kuwait have arrested a person for allegedly funding terrorist groups and providing financial help to a youth from Maharashtra’ s Kalyan town to travel to Syria and join the Islamic State.

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The National Investigation Agency had sent a mutual assistance request to authorities in the oil-rich nation over the transfer of $1,000 by a Kuwaiti national to Areeb Majeed — who is now in NIA custody — and his three friends while they were in Iraq in May 2014, a spokesperson for the federal anti-terror agency said.

“The Kuwaiti authorities have now informed us that one Abdullah Hadi Abdul Rahman al-Enezi had sent $1,000 to Areeb Majeed through Western Union money transfer,” the spokesperson said. Al-Enezi has reportedly confessed that he started financing terrorist outfits on returning from Pakistan in 2013.

Majeed, Shaheem Tanki, Fahad Sheikh and Aman Tandel — all from Kalyan in Thane district — had travelled to Iraq in May 2014 on the pretext of a pilgrimage but went off the radar and were later found to have joined the Islamic State in Syria.

After spending six months with the terror group, Majeed — who was injured in combat — returned to India via Turkey on November 28, 2014 and was arrested and charge-sheeted by the NIA. He is currently lodged in jail. It later emerged that his friend Tanki was killed in Syria.