MiliTANT gRoup hAd iNCeNdiARy leAdeR
— The purported leader of an extremist group blamed for an Easter attack in Sri Lanka that killed over 300 people began posting videos online three years ago calling for non-Muslims to be ‘eliminated,’ faith leaders said on Tuesday.
Much remains unclear about how a little-known group called National Thowfeek Jamaath carried out six large nearly simultaneous suicide bombings striking churches and hotels on Sunday.
However, warnings about growing radicalism in this island nation date to at least 2007, while Muslim leaders say their repeated warnings about the group and its leader drew no visible reaction from officials responsible for public security.
“Some of the intelligence people saw his picture but they didn’t take action,” said N.M. Ameen, the president of the Muslim Council of Sri Lanka.
“It was basically a hate campaign against all non-Muslims,” said Hilmy Ahamed, the Muslim council’s vice-president. “Basically, he was saying non-Muslims have to be eliminated.”
Zahran’s name was on one intelligence warning shared among Sri Lankan security forces, who apparently even quietly took their growing concerns to international experts as well.
Anne Speckhard, the director of the International Center for the Study of Violent Extremism, said a Sri Lankan intelligence official approached her at a conference in February with a surprising question. She was worried about what she described as a violent, homegrown group that “would just disappear” when the government tried to crack down on them.
“The intel person kind of came up to me and said, ‘You know, we’re kind of worried about this new group and there’s some activity going. What do you think?’”
Speckhard said. “It just kind of blows my mind that’s who it was.”
As far as the planning, Speckhard noted that Sri Lanka was “a part of the world that developed suicide vests” during the civil war against the Tamil Tigers, a secular, nationalist group that once was the world’s top suicide attacker.
But the style of Sunday’s attacks, targeting churches on Easter and hotels frequented by foreigners, followed that of Al Qaeda and the Daesh.
“It is a simple attack that is well thought out,” Speckhard said. “I do believe well thought out is a product of being in touch with someone from the outside.”
That’s a feeling shared by the Austin, Texas-based private intelligence firm Stratfor. The Daesh group claimed responsibility for the Sri Lanka attack via its Aamaq news agency on Tuesday, but offered no photographs or videos of attackers pledging their loyalty to the group. Such material, often showing suicide bombers pledging loyalty to the group before their assaults, offer credibility to their claims. —