Jihad's mailed fist of fury
B Raman
The latest e-mail sent by the 'Indian Mujahideen', said to be aligned with SIMI, has been signed by 'Al-Arbi-al-Hind', or 'The Arab of India'. So, who is this 'Arab of India'? And does his mission end with bombings? Or is he now planning to hijack a plane?
One more e-mail purporting to be from the so-called Indian Mujahideen was reported to have been received on the evening of August 23 by a news channel. It is suspected to have been sent from a computer in Mumbai's
To prove its authenticity, the message carries the photographs of some IEDs under the caption "weapons of mass destruction" and of two cars which were used for the blasts in Ahmedabad. This modus operandi is similar to the use of a picture of bicycles with IEDs attached to them in the e-mail received by news channels after the Jaipur blasts of May 13, 2008. In the e-mail sent by the Indian Mujahideen before the blasts in three cities of Uttar Pradesh on November 23, 2007, and before the Ahmedabad blasts, it apparently did not feel the need of proof since the blasts themselves served as proof of authenticity. In the e-mail sent after the Jaipur and Ahmedabad blasts, pictures were attached as proof of authenticity.
The e-mail sent before the Uttar Pradesh blasts and after the Jaipur blasts were purported to have been sent by by one 'Guru al-Hind', suspected to be a reference to Mohammad Afzal Guru, who has been sentenced to death for his role in the terrorist attack on Parliament House in December 2001. His mercy petition is still under consideration.
The e-mail put out before the Ahmedabad blasts was allegedly sent by the same Guru al-Hind. By the side of his signature at the bottom of the e-mail, the word 'al-Arbi' was written in capital letters. Al-Arbi means 'The Arab'. It also stands for Wednesday. It was taken to mean that the e-mail must have been signed by Guru al-Hind on the Wednesday preceding the blasts. In the latest e-mail, the reference to Guru al-Hind is not there -- neither in the e-mail ID nor at the bottom of the message. Instead, the e-mail is signed as al-Arbi in capital letters. The e-mail identity of the originator has also been changed as al-arbi-al-Hind. In this context, al-Arbi could mean only 'The Arab' and not Wednesday. Thus, the e-mail identity used means 'The Arab of
One of them, referred to by Pakistani jihadis as Abu Abdel Aziz, was linked to the Lashkar-e-Tayyeba . He played what jihadis consider a legendary role in organising jihad in
The latest e-mail, like the previous one, has many religious quotations and allusions. It is quite abusive. The language used is typical Indian English -- not Pakistani or Arab. It uses words like "bastards" that one picks up more in a secular educational institution than in a madarsa. It shows a propensity for the use of the verb "await" as in the previous e-mail.
The e-mail also tries to refute the allegations of the Gujarat Police that the SIMI activists arrested by them were the perpetrators of the Ahmedabad blasts. It denies that the SIMI has metamorphosed into the Indian Mujahideen as alleged by the Gujarat Police. The e-mail seeks to convey the impression that the real perpetrators have not been captured. Interestingly, it also tries to implicate Ken Haywood, an American missionary who was working in Mumbai and whose computer was suspected by the police to have been used by the Indian Mujahideen without his knowledge as a conscious collaborator. It thanks him and an associate of his for their co-operation and guidance in making the attack in Ahmedabad a success. Haywood has since run away from
The message warns of fidayeen attacks in the future. Some senior SIMI leaders arrested by the Madhya Pradesh Police in
The SIMI leaders arrested by the Madhya Pradesh Police had also reportedly claimed during interrogation that they had considered the options of hijacking an aircraft or taking of hostages before deciding on serial bombings. The Indian Mujahideen may still resort to hijacking an aircraft to secure the release of those arrested by the Gujarat Police.