Hyderabad: With security forces across the globe trying to put an end to the Islamic State terrorist organisation, its online handlers are planning to gather mujahideen who speak English to start a new social media outlet to unite mujahideen across the globe and execute their strategies.
The handlers have announced starting the media channel to reunite likeminded individuals seeing a division among the mujahideen and to bring them under one roof to fight for their cause.
The counter-terrorist agencies and also the social media companies are trying to delete the groups and channels used by the banned outfit and its handlers for spreading hatred, but the handlers are coming up with ‘kinship’ as a new strategy to reach more likeminded people.
In the instances in which the National Investigation Agency (NIA) has apprehended about 10 persons belonging to Hyderabad for owing allegiance to the Islamic State terrorist organisation, the kinship strategy has been found as the prime strategy in gathering a group. Recently, the handlers working for IS announced on social media that they are starting a new media channel on some social media sites in order bring all the mujahideen under one roof and exchange their ideas and benefit with the meetings.
The new media project is also to invite people who are good at English so that the terror outfit could spread its ideology to more numbers of people.
The handlers also feel that there is much division among the fighters and wanted to unite them with the media project.
They also opine that with the help of one another, they can achieve something.
The messages circulated on social media by the handlers calling it a great project asks likeminded people to at least share their ideas if they do not want to join the project.
The officials who are in the know of the activities of the terror outfit opined that social media has been a powerful tool for the organisation, which it makes use of to influence people in remote corners and this was found out during the investigation of the cases where NIA cracked the modules formed on kinship basis.
The online handlers who are present in the unidentified locations have been successful in implementing their strategies to make sympathisers join the IS.
In the case registered in 2016 by NIA, Hyderabad, where around eight persons including two siblings Mohammed lbrahim Yazdani and Mohammed Iliyas Yazdani, were arrested, the kinship strategy worked for the IS, the officials said.
They target one sympathiser and then ask him to influence his near and dear to join the organisation owing allegiance to the IS. Further, they would be asked either to fly to Syria or to carry out lone wolf attacks.
In the Yazdani brothers’ case, they tried to fly to Syria via Greece but were denied visas after which they took up Telegram as a tool to plan attacks in the country.
Same is the case with Abdul Bastih, who tried to flee the country and join the IS in Syria, but could not go.
The handlers in both cases were successful in executing the kinship strategy to influence sympathisers like Ibrahim Yazdani and Basith, to convince their close associates who would believe and follow their path.
“The handlers are very tech savvy and know how to track and target the sympathisers. They then ask them to join more likeminded people and form a group and owe their allegiance to the IS by sending a video. This is how the kinship strategy is followed by the IS,” said the official, adding that this strategy was also observed in several other cases in India, where kinship worked.
