ASIA: India's 'Mujahedeen' groups: a home-grown militancy?
27 Nov 2008 5:37 PM
NEW DELHI, Nov 27 AFP - The previously unknown group that claimed responsibility for the attacks across Mumbai has added to the growing belief that India is confronting a home-grown Islamic militancy.
The vast majority of previous attacks on Indian soil have been squarely blamed on groups based in or directly supported by neighbouring Pakistan.
But attacks over the last year have been claimed by groups with names stressing their local origins.
Deccan Mujahedeen, which said it was responsible for the Mumbai assault on Wednesday night, takes its title from the Deccan plateau that covers much of south India.
The outfit sent emails to local media saying it carried out the attacks.
One of the gunmen holed up in the Trident hotel told the India TV channel by phone on Thursday that the little-known terror outfit wanted an end to the persecution of Indian Muslims and the release of all fellow Islamic militants detained in India.
"Muslims in India should not be persecuted. We love this as our country but when our mothers and sisters were being killed, where was everybody?" he said from inside the hotel, which was surrounded by army commandos.
A similarly shadowy group calling itself the Indian Mujahedeen claimed responsibility for serial blasts in Delhi in September, which killed 20 people, and bombings in the western city of Ahmedabad in July when 45 died.
Another group, the Islamic Security Force-Indian Mujahedeen, said it was behind explosions last month in India's north-east state of Assam that killed 80.
It is unclear whether the various groups are connected, but retired senior security official B Raman has said their chosen names were a "bid to Indianise" the Islamic militant movement.
The Indian Mujahedeen, which also calls itself "the militia of Islam", first came to public attention last November following serial blasts in Uttar Pradesh.
The same group sent another email to the media after blasts in May in the city of Jaipur in which it said it would wage an "open war" against India for supporting the United States, and warned of more attacks against tourist sites.
Security services suspect the groups may be fronts for outfits that have been banned by the Indian government over the past few years such as the Students' Islamic Movement of India.
Others say they could be an undercover coalition of the Pakistan-based Lashkar-e-Taiba and Jaish-e-Mohammed militant organisations.
Just minutes before the blasts in Ahmedabad, the main commercial city of Gujarat state, the Indian Mujahedeen sent emails to several television news stations warning that people would "feel the terror of death".
It said the Ahmedabad blasts were revenge for riots which swept Gujarat in 2002 in which at least 2,000 people, mainly Muslims, were hacked, shot and burnt to death.
It has warned India's largest-circulation daily, The Times of India, and other media groups to halt their "propaganda war" against Muslims.
And it has told Mukesh Ambani, India's richest businessman, to "think twice" about his construction of a glass-and-steel 27-storey home on land in Mumbai where a Muslim orphanage once stood.
