Sri Lankan Easter blast suspect was under Indian watch

Agencies
May 15, 2019

Colombo/Ahmedabad, May 15: A Sri Lankan software engineer suspected by authorities in Sri Lanka of having provided technical and logistical support to the Easter Sunday suicide bombers was monitored by Indian intelligence agencies three years ago for links with Islamic State suspects, investigators said.

Four sources in Sri Lankan investigating agencies said they believed Aadhil Ameez, a 24-year-old, was the link between two groups that carried out the attacks on churches and hotels that killed more than 250 people and wounded hundreds more.

Aadhil has been arrested and is in police custody, the sources said. His arrest has not been made public, but when asked by Reuters, Ruwan Gunasekera, the main spokesman for the Sri Lankan police, confirmed Aadhil was taken into custody on April 25, four days after the attacks.

The spokesman declined to give more details.

A police official at India's National Investigation Agency (NIA) and another police official in the western state of Gujarat said they were providing assistance to Sri Lankan authorities.

Aadhil, who describes himself on his LinkedIn profile as a senior engineer/programmer/web designer with a masters degree in computer science and a bachelors in political science from U.K. universities, could not be reached for comment.

He does not yet have a lawyer and under Sri Lanka's tough new emergency laws imposed after the attacks, he can be held indefinitely.

His father, M. Ameez, who lives in Aluthgama, a town south of Colombo, denied that Aadhil was involved with the plotters and said such "allegations are lies".

The Indian investigators said they had been monitoring Aadhil since 2016 and named him in two chargesheets filed in Indian courts against suspected Islamic State operatives as being one of their contacts.

According to one of the chargesheets, reviewed by Reuters, he showed up in Facebook, WhatsApp and Telegram chats with two of the suspects who are on trial for plotting an attack on a synagogue in the western city of Ahmedabad.

The two suspects Ubed Ahmad Mirza, a lawyer, and Stimberwala Mohamed Kasim, a hospital technician, were accused of planning "lone-wolf" attacks, according to the chargesheet.

Lawyers for both men rejected the allegations and said they were innocent. Both lawyers declined to comment on the possible role of Aadhil.

Aadhil has also been named in another chargesheet filed in court by the NIA for providing propaganda and online material to three Indians arrested in early 2016 for promoting Islamic State.

The three men, Sheikh Azhar ul-Islam, Adnan Hassan and Mohammed Rafiq Sadique Shaikh are on trial in a special Delhi court facing charges of criminal conspiracy to propagate the ideology of Islamic State, recruit, raise funds and facilitate the travel of people to Syria, according to the chargesheet.

Sheikh Mohammad Munawar, a cousin of ul-Islam, said the charges were fabricated and that he had no criminal record ever.

Families of the other two accused could not be reached. Their lawyers were not immediately available for comment.

Reuters was unable to determine when the Indians informed Sri Lankan authorities of the surveillance. The two officials declined to say whether they continued to keep Aadhil under surveillance after they completed investigation of the cases in India.

Indian intelligence services warned Sri Lankan authorities of a possible attack at least three times in April alone, officials have said.

Link Between Groups

Sri Lankan authorities have said two local Islamist groups - the National Tawheed Jamaath (NTJ) led by radical preacher Zahran Hashim and the Jamathei Millathu Ibrahim (JMI) - were involved in the synchronised blasts in Colombo, the island nation's capital, and two other towns. Islamic State has claimed responsibility for the attacks.

Two sources in Sri Lanka's police Criminal Investigation Department and two military officials said Aadhil was the link between the two groups.

The groups used the dark web and WhatsApp to communicate, they said.

However, investigators don't know yet whether Aadhil was simply a facilitator for the bombers, or if he was also one of the ring leaders involved in planning and executing the attacks.

Last week, police raided IT firm Virtusa, where Aadhil had interned in 2013, according to his profile. One current employee has been detained for questioning in connection with the attacks, police say, but no other details have been provided.

Online Chats

India, with one of the world's largest populations of Muslims, has claimed success in foiling several Islamic State cells, mostly in southern and western India.

Court documents reviewed by Reuters show that the online conversations between the Sri Lankan and the two Indians in western India, began in the summer of 2016 and lasted until the arrest of the two Indians in late 2017. The documents describe how Aadhil Ax, as he called himself online, asked the Indians if they had heard about the atrocities being committed against Muslims in Sri Lanka by the majority Buddhist community.

He talked about his own experiences: that he had been in jail, that his house had been torched and that he limped because of beatings, the documents seen by Reuters show. Investigators and neighbours in Sri Lanka say none of these were true.

The Sri Lankan investigators interviewed by Reuters say Aadhil made claims he was a journalist and a PhD candidate in some of his online postings, which also were false.

They said they believed Aadhil, operating largely from his home, was a key part of the Easter bombings plot and helped in communications and training.

"He was the main technology person for them," said one of the CID sources involved in the investigation. The source said Aadhil was helped in this by Abdul Latheef Mohamed Jameel, one of the eight suicide bombers who detonated his explosives at a guesthouse after failing to do so at Colombo's luxury Taj Samudra hotel.

About a week before the bombings, Aadhil met Jameel, Zahran the extremist preacher, and Inshaf Ibrahim and Ilham Ibrahim, the two brothers from a family engaged in the spice trade in Colombo, the other sources said. The latter three men blew themselves up in five-star Colombo hotels.

The CID source said that Aadhil, Zahran and the Ibrahim brothers had leased land in Wanathawilluwa town in the north and set up a training camp. Police raided the place in January this year and discovered a large amount of explosives, but did not know at the time who had leased it.

When police raided Aadhil's home four days after the bombings, all his computer files were found to have been deleted.

"He seems to have played an important role in setting up communications for the attackers, helping organise meetings and training camps," said one of the military sources.

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News Network
May 27,2020

Washington, May 27: Most viruses and other germs do not spread easily on flights, the US Center for Disease Control and Prevention has said in its COVID-19 guidelines which do not recommend following social distancing between two passengers inside a plane or keeping the middle seat unoccupied.

As a result of coronavirus pandemic, air traffic inside the US has come to a near halt. Air traffic is said to be down to about 90 per cent. For all travellers coming from overseas, the Center for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) has recommended 14 days quarantine.

"Most viruses and other germs do not spread easily on flights because of how air circulates and is filtered on aeroplanes," the CDC has said in its set of COVID-19 guidelines for air travellers.

However, it noted that the air travellers were not risk-free especially in the time of the coronavirus pandemic and recommended Americans to avoid travel as far as possible.

"Air travel requires spending time in security lines and airport terminals, which can bring you in close contact with other people and frequently touched surfaces," it said.

"Social distancing is difficult on crowded flights, and you may have to sit near others (within six feet), sometimes for hours. This may increase your risk for exposure to the virus that causes COVID-19," the CDC said.

But instead of recommended social distancing inside commercial planes, the CDC has advised a series of preventive and hygienic measures to be taken by the airlines pilot and crew to prevent the spread of coronavirus.

The US Department of Transportation and Federal Aviation Administration in its latest safety alerts for operators on May 11 said that air carriers and crews conducting flight operations having a nexus to the US, including both domestic and foreign air carriers, should follow CDC's occupational health and safety guidance.

The CDC issued its guidelines in first guidelines for the airlines and airline crew on March and again in May.

The CDC, which has issued an exhaustive social guideline measures in various sections, is silent on keeping the middle seat of a plane unoccupied so as to maintain the six feet distance between two passengers.

It calls for the plane crew to report to the CDC a traveller with specific COVID-19 symptoms like fever, persistent cough, difficulty in breathing and appearing unwell.

Asking the airlines and cabin crew to review infection control guidelines for cabin crew, the CDC recommends several measures for cabin crew to protect themselves and others, manage a sick traveller, clean contaminated areas, and take actions after a flight.

Prominent among them include washing hands often with soap and water for at least 20 seconds, particularly after assisting sick travellers or touching potentially contaminated body fluids or surfaces and use of alcohol-based hand sanitizer (containing at least 60 per cent alcohol) if soap and water are not available.

Airlines should consider providing alcohol-based hand sanitizer to cabin and flight crews for their personal use, it said.

The CDC guidelines do not recommend following social distancing inside a plane between two passengers or keeping the middle seat unoccupied. But it asks to minimise contact between passengers and cabin crew and the sick person.

"If possible, separate the sick person from others (by a distance of 2 meters or 6 feet, ideally) and designate one crew member to serve the sick person. Offer a facemask, if available and if the sick person can tolerate it. If a facemask is not available or cannot be tolerated, ask the sick person to cover their mouth and nose with tissues when coughing or sneezing," said the CDC guidelines.

If no symptomatic passengers were identified during or immediately after the flight, the CDC recommends airlines to follow routine operating procedures for cleaning aircraft, managing solid waste, and wearing PPE.

"If symptomatic passengers are identified during or immediately after the flight, routine cleaning procedures should be followed, and enhanced cleaning procedures should also be used," it said.

Clean porous (soft) surfaces (e.g, cloth seats, cloth seat belts) at the seat of the symptomatic passengers and within 6 feet of the symptomatic passengers in all directions, it added.

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News Network
January 13,2020

Jan 13: India lost more than $1.33 billion to internet restrictions in 2019 as Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s government pushed ahead with his party’s Hindu nationalist agenda, raising tensions and sparking nationwide protests.

The worst shutdown has been in Kashmir, where after intermittent closures in the first half of the year, the internet has been cut off since Aug. 5 following the government’s decision to revoke the special autonomous status of the country’s only Muslim-majority state, a study said. The prologued closure was criticized by India’s highest court, which ruled Friday that the “limitless” internet shutdown enforced by the government for the last five months was illegal and asked that it be reviewed.

India imposed more internet restrictions than any other large democracy, according to the Cost of Internet Shutdowns 2019 report released by Top10VPN, a U.K.-based digital privacy and security research group. The South Asian nation recorded the third-highest losses after Iraq and Sudan, which lost $2.31 billion and $1.86 billion respectively to disruptions. Worldwide internet restrictions caused losses worth $8.05 billion, the report said.

The cost of internet blackouts was calculated using indicators from groups including the World Bank, International Telecommunication Union, and the Delhi-based Software Freedom Law Center. It includes social media shutdowns in its calculations.

India’s ministry of information and technology didn’t respond to an email seeking a response to the report’s findings.

‘Conservative Estimates’

Through 2019, India shut access to the internet for over 4,000 hours. The report added shutdowns in India were often narrowly targeted, down to the level of blocking city districts for a few hours to allow security forces to restore order. Many of these incidents were not included in the report.

“These are conservative estimates,” said Simon Migliano, head of research at U.K.-based Top10VPN. “Internet shutdowns are increasing and it shows a damaging trend.”

India’s other major internet disruptions coincided with two moves by the government that affect India’s Muslim minority. The first disruption took place in November in the states of Uttar Pradesh and Rajasthan after the Supreme Court handed a victory to Hindu groups over Muslim petitioners in a long-simmering dispute over a plot of land.

There were further disruptions in December when protests erupted against the introduction of a religion-based law that allows undocumented migrants of all faiths except Islam from neighbouring countries to seek Indian citizenship. The government enforced shutdowns across Uttar Pradesh and some Northeastern states in order to quell the protests, the report said.

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News Network
July 10,2020

Lahore, Jul 10: The Punjab government enforced smart lockdown in seven cities of the province for 15 days with an immediate effect from Thursday night, The News International reported.

The Primary and Secondary Healthcare Department on Thursday issued a notification under the Punjab Infectious Diseases Ordinance 2020, about enforcement of lockdown in Lahore, Multan, Faisalabad, Gujranwala, Sialkot, Gujrat and Rawalpindi, till July 24 midnight.

In Lahore, the lockdown will be enforced in A2 Block Township, EME Society, Main Bazaar Chungi Amr Sadhu, Punjab Government Servants Housing Scheme, Wapda Town, C-Block Jauhar Town and Green City.

The basic necessities of life will remain available in smart lockdown areas. "The purpose of the smart lockdown is to minimise movement of people in hotspots of positive coronavirus cases," said Capt (retd) Muhammad Usman, Secretary, Primary and Secondary Healthcare Department.

The country registered 2,751 new COVID-19 cases during the last 24 hours, taking the tally to 243,599 on Friday. The province-wise breakup includes 85,261 cases in Punjab, 100,900 cases in Sindh, 29,406 in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa, 11,099 in Balochistan, 13,829 in Islamabad, 1,619 in Gilgit-Baltistan and 1,485 in Pakistan-occupied Kashmir.

The death toll due to the virus reached 5,058 with 75 more deaths reported over the last 24 hours, as per data cited by Radio Pakistan.

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