BENGALURU/NEW DELHI: Three youth from Karnataka, including two from Bengaluru, died fighting for the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (ISIS), according to a recent Intelligence Bureau (IB) report from Delhi. They joined the terror group a couple of years ago and died in Iraq and Syria, the report confirmed.
It identified them as Faiz Masood of Cooke Town, Umar Subhan of Shivaji Nagar (both in Bengaluru) and Abdul Khuddus Turki of Vijayapura in north Karnataka. All three died during coalition strikes against the ISIS, the report stated.
While Faiz left India for Qatar and subsequently Syria in September 2013, after having applied for a passport in July the same year, Umar travelled to Yemen in 2008, and later joined the ISIS.
Faiz, after reaching Syria, joined the ISIS. He was one of about 12,000 recruits from 81 countries. Sources tracking the jihadis from India said Turki was also among them.According to intelligence inputs, he travelled to Saudi Arabia in July 2014 and subsequently left for Iraq to join the ISIS.
Bengaluru Homes
Express visited the houses of Faiz and Umar in Bengaluru on Tuesday. While Umar’s family has been evicted for not paying rent for almost 15 years, members of Faiz’s family refused to speak.
“I do not want to talk about him (Faiz). I do not want any news about him. There is nothing to discuss further,” said a man at the house.
The Karnataka youth went to the war zone much before Bengaluru police arrested alleged ISIS propagandist Mehdi Masroor Biswas in December last year.
The State intelligence department and Bengaluru police have no clue about their movements or their death. “We recently received reports from Central agencies about two or three youth who died fighting for the ISIS. We have no confirmation they were from Karnataka,” a senior officer with the State intelligence told Express.
Coastal Link
Another recruit from South India - Abu Tahir from Palakkad in Kerala - too reportedly died fighting in the terror zones of Syria and Iraq. Intelligence agencies had earlier claimed that Sultan Armar, a former Indian Mujahideen operative-turned-ISIS recruit from Bhatkal, might also have been killed in Kobane while fighting alongside the ISIS.
Among 11 Indian ISIS recruits identified by the intelligence agencies, four were learnt to be from Karnataka.