A French court sentenced on Wednesday, 20 accused persons including Salah Abdeslam and Pakistani national Mohammad Usman for the November 13, 2015 Paris terror attacks, in which 130 people were killed, on Wednesday.
It emerged during the investigation that there is an India angle.
Subahani Haja Moideen, a Tamil Nadu based Islamic State operative who was arrested by the National Investigation Agency (NIA) in October 2016, trained with Mohammad Ghani Usman, a former bomb-maker of Lashkar-e-Taiba (LeT) who later joined ISIS and had become his best friend during five months of training in Iraq in 2015.
Moideen, 37, convicted by an Ernakulam court in September 2020 for joining ISIS told investigators that he met Paris bombers including Abdelhamid Abaaoud (killed during the bombing) and Salah Abdeslam on his way to Iraq.
To gather more details, a team of French investigators came to Kochi in December 2018 to interrogate Moideen about the training and his links with the Paris attack squad of the Islamic State. In return, a NIA team had travelled to Paris in to question Usman, who, in the past, was close to LeT leadership; Indian agencies wanted to get further information from him on 26/11 Mumbai attacks.
Abdeslam, a Belgium- born-French national, is the only survivor among 10 Paris attackers and was arrested in 2016 after five months on the run. A Paris court on Wednesday sentenced him for life without parole. Usman was arrested in Salzburg when he was trying to enter France for a “second wave of attacks” with his IS associate Adel Haddadi. Usman and Haddadi have been handed 18 years of prison by the Paris court.
{{/usCountry}}Abdeslam, a Belgium- born-French national, is the only survivor among 10 Paris attackers and was arrested in 2016 after five months on the run. A Paris court on Wednesday sentenced him for life without parole. Usman was arrested in Salzburg when he was trying to enter France for a “second wave of attacks” with his IS associate Adel Haddadi. Usman and Haddadi have been handed 18 years of prison by the Paris court.
{{/usCountry}}It could not be verified whether any information shared by Indian agencies with the French investigators or directly obtained through questioning of Moideen was useful in the trial of Abdeslam, Usman and others.
A native of Tirunelveli in Tamil Nadu, Moideen left India from Chennai and reached Turkey on April, 2015 with the intention of joining Islamic State; the global outfit’s influence was at its peak at the time and it held vast territories in Iraq and Syria. Moideen then crossed over to Iraq through the land border and joined the Islamic State using the name Abu Jasmine Al-Hindi. “After undergoing religious and arms training with ISIS/ Daish in Iraq, he was deployed with ISIS’ military formation Umar Ibnu Khatab Khatiba, headed by the French national Abu Suleiman Al-Francisi, who was later killed,” according to a NIA statement in September 2020.
After months of training, he returned to India on September 21, 2015 and attempted to procure explosive chemicals from Sivakasi in Tamil Nadu, based on instructions from his handlers in Islamic State, to carry out terrorist attacks in India, on behalf of ISIS/ Daesh.
Moideen was put in a group of 150 members of Foreign Terrorist Fighters (FTF) from countries such as France, Algeria, Pakistan, Afghanistan, Tajikistan, South east Asian countries including Indonesia, Philippines, Tunisia, the UK and other European countries during his training. His group was called – Umar Ibnu Khatab Khatiba and it was headed by a French national with IS given name, Abu Suleiman Al-Francisi.
During his stay in Iraq, he became close to Usman because there was no language barrier, he told investigators.