Centre ‘terrorist’ tag on J&K IS recruiter

SRINAGAR: The Centre on Thursday declared Aijaz Ahmad Ahangar alias Abu Usman Al-Kashmiri, a Srinagar-born operative currently based in Afghanistan, a terrorist for his alleged role as one of the chief recruiters of Islamic State (IS) in J&K.

The Union home ministry (MHA) notification under the Unlawful Activities (Prevention) Act, 1967, makes the 49-year-old the 49th designated IS terrorist.

Ahangar has been wanted in J&K for more than two decades. Besides being engaged in his alleged role as the IS recruiter for more than three years, Ahangar has built coordination channels between various terrorists groups, including al-Qaida.

“Ahangar is working towards providing traction to militancy in Kashmir and has started the process of identifying people for inclusion in his Kashmir based network,” the MHA said, adding he helped put together an online India-centric IS propaganda magazine.

Ahangar was held in Afghanistan’s Kandahar in April 2020 along with IS Khurasan chapter (IS-K) chief Aslam Farooqui and charged with killing 27 Sikh worshippers a month earlier. He was freed later. In J&K, Ahangar had been arrested once in the mid-90s.

Ahangar’s son Umais and son-in-law Huzafa-al-Bakistani were killed in Afghanistan a few years ago. Ahangar had married twice, once in Srinagar and later in Pakistan-occupied Kashmir (PoK) after he shifted to the neighbouring country in 2008.

In Srinagar, Ahangar’s father-in-law Abdullah Ghazali was an alleged Lashkar commander and played a role in the formation of the Tehreek-ul-Mujahideen in 1990, a groupdominated by mercenaries recruited from Pakistan and PoK. Ghazali was murdered in February last year.

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