ISIS suspect’s Andaman stay under the scanner

MUMBAI: Investigations after the arrest of the Kerala-based Salafi preacher, Mohammed Haneed, accused of persuading youngster to join the Islamic State of Iraq and

MUMBAI: Investigations after the arrest of the Kerala-based Salafi preacher, Mohammed Haneed, accused of persuading youngster to join the Islamic State of Iraq and Al-Sham (ISIS), have now spread to the Andaman and Nicobar Islands after the Mumbai crime branch officers learnt that he had spent a full year there.

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The investigators said a team will visit the islands to ascertain Haneef ’s activities after a thorough interrogation.

Crime branch officials said that Haneef, 26, who has been preaching Salafist ideologies for almost a decade, also worked in a mosque in the island. Haneef has said that he had been a preacher at four places. He would stay at a place for over a year, officials said.

“Haneef said he cannot understand or speak any language apart from Malayalam and Urdu, which made us arrange an interpreter to interrogate him. We are in the process of ascertaining his work in the island and what lured him to go there. He has claimed that he preached in a mosque there for a year and returned to Kerala,” said a police officer.

The officials said that they will trace Haneef ’s movements during his year-long stay at the Islands and find out who he met there. The officials are also investigating if he was involved in any indoctrination activities in the union territory.

A team from the crime branch will leave for Kerala in couple of days for questioning friends and others who were acquainted with Haneef and Ashfaque, whose father Abdul Majeed Kadar Khan, 60, lodged the FIR at Nagpada police station.

Meanwhile, Arshi Qureshi, a guest relations officer of IRF and Rizwan Khan, who were arrested by Kerala police, were further remanded in police custody