New Delhi: Enraged by the Gujarat ‘pogrom’ and in search of retribution, an 18-year-old college student’s existential crisis had crystallised in a battle over his beard.
For more than a year, Syed Muhammad Arshiyan Haider had allowed his facial hair to grow, convinced Muslims were unable to confront their oppressors because of their inadequate commitment to the faith. Haider’s parents, alarmed by their son’s growing involvement with neoconservative religion, demanded he visit the local barber.
The young man, though, was more convinced by the argument of a cleric he’d met one evening in 2003: “You should not anger Allah to please people.”
The cleric in question was Abdul Rehman Ali Khan, now being tried on charges of plotting to recruit jihadists, who described his interaction with Haider in his confessional testimony to the police (which under Indian law cannot be used as evidence against him).
For the young Haider, contact with Rehman was the beginning of an extraordinary journey. The electronic engineering graduate from Aligarh Muslim University, whose family home is in Ranchi, would go on to get a job in Dammam, Saudi Arabia, only to end up using his skills in an Islamic State team that designed suicide drones and short-range missiles that revolutionised the arsenals of terrorist groups.
Since 2017, Haider, now 38, has been imprisoned in a Turkey for his involvement in terrorist activities, but not many details have emerged about his life. From classified police and...
Read Full Story: https://theprint.in/india/engineer-from-ranchi-built-drones-for-is-revolutionised-terror-tech-now-hes-in-turkish-jail/944410/
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