IS woman recruit Yasmin Ahmed give shocking revelations about ISIS terror classes in northern Kerala of having recruited atleast 40 youth

Kochi August 8: A woman recruiter,Yasmin Ahmed, for Islamic State has made sensational revelations before the Special Investigation Team of Kerala Police that the Iraq and Syria based global terror outfit is secretly running terror classes in Kerala where so far 40 people have been indoctrinated in its ideology of jihad.

Yasmin Ahmad, a 28-year-old school teacher in Kerala who was recently arrested on the grounds of being a suspected ISIS recruit, told the investigators that a person called Abdul Rashid, a fugitive ISIS recruiter held these classes, and is now operating out of Afghanistan.

We have identified some of those who attended radicalisation sessions conducted by Rashid in Thrikkaripur in north Kerala’s Kasargode. We are closely watching movements of some of them, said a senior officer of the Kerala Police SIT.

Ahmad was arrested at the Delhi airport last week, when she was about to board a flight to Kabul.

She was reportedly going to join Rashid there.

Rashid is believed to have orchestrated the disappearance of 21 youth from Kerala in the months of May and June.

Ahmad couldn’t go along with the group of 21 due to some problem with her 4-year-old child’s travel documents.
She belongs to Saudi Arabia and came to Kerala three years ago after she found a job in Peace International School in Malappuram, where she met Rashid.

Rashid used to conduct the sessions in the guise of Quran classes, where he briefed the recruits about the ISIS. He regularly read the ISIS magazine, Dabiq, and used material from online propaganda to radicalise youth.

Born and brought up in Saudi Arabia where her parents were settled, she came to Kerala three years ago with husband Syed Ahmad after getting a job in Peace International School in Malappuram.

The woman met Rashid at the school, where he used to train teachers. Rashid soon befriended the couple, and a relationship grew between him and Yasmin after her husband fell out with her and left the country.

Yasmin is proficient in English, and has a religious bent of mind. As such she got immediately attracted towards Rashid’s ultra-radical teachings, investigators said.

He went to Afghanistan later to become a lynchpin of the IS recruitment drive.

Yasmin, in the meantime, kept in touch with him through text messages. She was arrested after police intercepted her communication with Rashid.

16 Kerala Muslim youth missing, relatives fear they went to Iraq, Syria

“Yasmin is not cooperating with the investigation. She often argues that she hasn’t done anything wrong in the country and her aborted trip to Afghanistan was part of her religious duty,” the source said.

Intelligence agencies were probing the funding network of the terror group, as Rs 2 lakh was reportedly deposited in Yasmin’s account two weeks before her arrest. Also, a possible link with a Kuwaiti man, who paid for the trip of several IS-bound Indians last year, has been looked into.

Arib Majeed, an IS deserter currently in a Mumbai jail, has said that Kuwaiti businessman Abdullah Hadi was his handler and he funded his team’s trip to Iraq and Syria.

Kuwaiti police had arrested Hadi, and a National Investigation Agency team from India would soon leave for the west Asian country to question him.

The anti-terrorism agency, formed after the 26/11 Mumbai attacks, will eventually take over from Kerala police the probe into the suspected IS activities in the southern state.