PFI Has Links With Radical Turkish Group That Provides Arms To Al-Qaeda Jihadists In Syria: Report

The Union Home Ministry has said the PFI had 'links' with global terror groups like ISIS and Jamat-ul-Mujahideen Bangladesh (JMB).

The PFI was on Wednesday banned by the Centre along with its several associates for five years

Source : PTI

Banned Islamist outfit Popular Front of India (PFI) has close relations with a radical Turkish organisation that allgedly provides weapons to jihadists linked to al-Qaeda in Syria, NIA officials said. In fact, two of PFI's top leaders were hosted by the organisation named Foundation for Human Rights and Freedoms and Humanitarian Relief (Insan Hak ve Hurriyetleri ve Insani Yardım Vakfı, commonly known as IHH), PTI reported.

The PFI was on Wednesday banned by the Centre along with its several associates for five years. In a notification, the Union Home Ministry said PFI had "links" with global terror groups like ISIS and Jamat-ul-Mujahideen Bangladesh (JMB).

The IHH calls itself a Turkish human rights organisation engaged in beneficial work for society. It collaborates closely with the Turkish intelligence service MIT, PTI reported.

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Investigators have discovered that it is an al-Qaeda-linked organisation that was accused of smuggling arms to al-Qaeda-affiliated jihadists in Syria in January 2014.

The IHH was purportedly involved in supplying arms to Libyan militants as per the leaked emails of Berat Albayrak, a former finance minister of Turkey and the son-in-law of Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdoan.

EM Abdul Rahiman and Professor P Koya, members of the PFI's national executive council, were hosted in Istanbul by the IHH, according to an article by Stockholm-based Nordic Monitor.

The meeting between the Turkish group and PFI members came at a time when Erdogan is trying to reach out to Muslims in Southeast Asia as a global leader of the community.

In fact, the PFI had issued a statement endorsing Erdogan after a 2016 coup attempt that was reportedly a false information planted by Erdogan's intelligence chiefs to consolidate Islamists' power in the government and remove critics from government jobs.

The Turkish government reciprocated by promoting PFI on state-run Anadolu news agency as a civic and social group "whose members were abused by Indian police".

The PFI's modus operandi bears uncanny similarities with another radical group, the Muslim Brotherhood, which was founded in Egypt in 1928 by Hasan Al-Banna with the intention to unite the Muslims.

Many organisations throughout the world, like the PFI in India, which aims to unify Muslims by disregarding differences and concentrating on the "end goal" as they view it, have embraced this idea, PTI quoted intelligence officials as saying.

This is a tactic of assimilation employed by the thinkers and ideologues of the PFI to infiltrate among moderate Muslims or followers of Sufi to recruit as many youths as it can.

NIA officials said the PFI has also come up with a strategy to gain the support of the Christians to grab power. To lure the Christians, they used the word "faith" rather than any Muslim word, PTI reported.

(With inputs from PTI)