Kerala Jihadi Abdul Sattar, arrested in Andhra

Andhra police have arrested an explosives expert from Kerala who allegedly sent youths to Pakistan for training in jihadi activities in Kashmir.

Abdul Sattar, who police say designed some of the bombs that went off in Hyderabad in 2007 and in Bangalore and Ahmedabad last year, was detained in Hyderabad last week. He was today remanded in the custody of Karnataka police, which wanted him in 10 cases.

Sattar is accused of recruiting youths from Kerala and putting them through the basics of militancy in some Hyderabad madarsas before sending them to Pakistan.

Andhra police zeroed in on Sattar after arresting one of his alleged recruits, Sheikh Abdul Jabbar, from Tirur in Kerala’s Malappuram district, from Hyderabad last November. Jabbar was later handed over to Kerala police.

“With the arrest of Sattar and Jabbar, we have found out how Muslim youths in two districts of Kerala, Malappuram and Kannur, are being lured into terrorism,” said a senior intelligence official.

Police officials said Sattar, a businessman in electrical goods, had first come to Hyderabad in 2004 and stayed at Jamia Arifia Nooria, a seminary-cum-educational institution in Cyberabad’s Bandlaguda.

Sattar had links with Arifuddin, a cleric and a custodian of the seminary’s dargah who had come to Hyderabad from Kerala 20 years ago, police said.