POLICE RELEASE DETAILS OF 5 IS ‘RECRUITS’ WHO MAY BE IN SYRIA

TH I RU VAN ANT HAP U RAM: A week after Kerala police arrested five people, including an alleged key recruiter for the Islamic State, they have released details of five others believed to be fighting for the terror group in Syria.

Police said all the suspects, aged between 25 and 32 years, belonged to north Kerala and had gone missing from their workplace in the Middle East two years ago. The information was acquired through the interrogation of Hamza Th alas serry,t he IS ‘recruiter’ taken into custody. The missing people have been identified as Abdul Gayoom, Abdul Manaf, Muhamed Shabeer, Suhail and Saffan. While Ga yo om hails from The chi ku lam and Saffan from Pappinasserry, the remaining three are residents of Valapattanam in Kannur.

“We have information that these youth are currently operating in trouble-torn areas of Syria. Hamza identified some of them during interrogation. However, we are yet to understand how they reached Syria, and who funded them,” said Kannur deputy SP PP Sadanandan.

The recent arrest of five deportees from Turkey has reaffirmed the Kerala police’s suspicion that several people — numbering between 100 and 150 — employed in west Asian countries have joined the Islamic State. However, no mechanism exists to monitor their movements abroad. Police said 52-year-old Hamza (also known as ‘Hamsa Taliban’) allegedly enjoys close links with senior members of the Islamic State.