A seven-member team of the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI), the domestic intelligence and security service of the United States, have arrived in West Bengal to interrogate ISIS operative Musa. The team arrived at the National Investigation Agency (NIA) office in Kolkata on Thursday afternoon.
25-year-old Mohammad Masiuddin alias Musa was arrested from Burdwan railway station by the CID on July 4 on charges of radicalising youths to join ISIS.
Later, the probe was taken over by the NIA and the agency is currently probing his links to Jamaat-Ul-Mujahideen Bangladesh (JMB) and also the Dhaka attacks.
While the Superintendent of Police of the zonal unit of NIA in Kolkata, Soumitra Dhar refused to divulge the reason of interrogation, sources in the NIA reveal that Musa had agreed to take on an assignment from a JMB leader Abu Suleiman to target foreigners and US nationals in India and behead them.
In March 2015, Musa had met Abu Suleiman in West Bengal during his sister’s wedding. Musa had been in touch with Suleiman over Facebook, but Suleiman had expressed his wish to meet Musa in person. Later, Musa invited him to attend his sister’s wedding, held in Bengal.
Suleiman is now on the run and both – the Indian and Bangladeshi governments are looking for him.
Musa came under the scanner of CID and NIA after his e-mails and calls were traced to Bangladesh, Afghanistan and Syria. Officials in the investigating agency highlight that he had been touch with several ISIS operatives in Syria through social networking sites like Facebook and Twitter. Initial investigations revealed that he had also been in touch with several JMB operatives in Bangladesh.
Earlier, in the month of August, a three-member-team of Bangladesh's security intelligence department had also come to Kolkata to interrogate Musa.
