PFI had ties with Qaida-linked Turkish group: Intel to MHA

Tribune News Service

New Delhi, September 29

The Popular Front of India (PFI) has been maintaining close ties with a radical Turkish group accused of supplying arms to Al-Qaida-affiliated jihadists in Syria, states a dossier presented to the MHA by intelligence agencies. Two top leaders of the now-banned outfit were hosted by the group, officials said today.

The Foundation for Human Rights and Freedoms and Humanitarian Relief (Insan Hak ve Hurriyetleri ve Insani Yardim Vakfi, commonly known as IHH) projects itself as a Turkish human rights organisation involved in constructive work benefitting the society. However, intelligence agencies found that it is an Al-Qaida-linked Turkish charity organisation, which was accused of smuggling arms to Al-Qaida-affiliated jihadists in Syria in January 2014, the officials said, adding that the IHH has also been identified as an organisation that closely works with Turkish intelligence service MIT.

The officials said that according to reports, EM Abdul Rahiman and Prof P Koya, members of PFI’s national executive council, were privately hosted in Istanbul by the IHH. The officials said the PFI appeared to be a perfect match for the IHH as both organisations have been advocating the jihadist ideology.

The PFI also has uncanny similarity with another global radical group, the Muslim Brotherhood, which was founded in Egypt in 1928 by Hasan Al-Banna with the intention to unite the Muslims, overlooking differences for the sake of reaching a “greater goal” of acquiring political power in Egypt and then the rest of the West Asia, North Africa and other parts of the world, the officials said.

This principle has been adopted by many organisations globally including the PFI in India, which seeks to unite Muslims ignoring differences while focusing on the “end goal” as they see it, officials said, adding that this was a tactic of assimilation employed by the thinkers and ideologues of the outlawed outfit to infiltrate among moderate Muslims or followers of Sufi to recruit as many youths as it can. The PFI has also devised a shrewd strategy to gain the support of Christians to grab power and to lure them, they used the word “faith” rather than any Muslim word, officials added.

Meanwhile, the NIA in the report to the MHA informed that one of the PFI modules had even prepared to attack foreigners, especially Jews visiting Vattakkanal, a hill station in Tamil Nadu, the officials said. The module — Ansar-ul-Khilafa Kerala — also indulged in a secret campaign of recruiting, motivating and radicalising Muslim youths to join ISIS/ISIL, they said. The associates used various internet based platforms (both surface and deep web) for propagating ISIS ideology, they added.

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