India: FBI team arrives to interrogate Islamic State suspect Musa

A seven-member team of the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI), the domestic intelligence and security service of the United States, arrived in India’s eastern state of West Bengal to interrogate alleged Islamic State operative, Musa. 

The team arrived at the National Investigation Agency (NIA) office in Bengal’s capital, Kolkata, on Thursday afternoon to examine Musa’s role. 

On July 4, 25-year-old Mohammad Masiuddin alias Musa was arrested from the Burdwan railway station in Bengal by the state's criminal investigation department (CID) on charges of radicalising youth to join IS (Islamic State). 

Later, the probe was taken over by India’s National Investigation Agency (NIA) and the agency is currently probing his links with Jamayetul Mujahideen Bangladesh (JMB) and also the Dhaka attacks.  

While Soumitra Dhar, the superintendent of police of the zonal unit of NIA in Kolkata, refused to divulge any details about the investigation, sources in the NIA revealed that Musa had agreed to take on an assignment from a JMB leader, Abu Suleiman, for targetting foreigners and US nationals in India and beheading them.

In March 2015, Musa had met Abu Suleiman at his sister’s wedding in Bengal.

Meanwhile, Suleiman is on the run and 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 said that he had been in touch with several IS 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.

A three-member team of Bangladesh's security intelligence department came to Kolkata on Monday to interrogate Musa.

(WION)