NB Twitter Scan | Al-Qaeda release video of UP-born AQIS chief Asim Umar who was killed in 2019

In an unusual development, Al-Qaeda in Indian Subcontinent has released first-ever video of it chief Asim Umar who was killed in 2019. Notably, he was born in Sambal, Uttar Pradesh. The video features Umar wherein he is delivering a speech to terrorists.

  

 

Umar was born in UP's Sambhal in the 1970s and later migrated to Pakistan. He reportedly had studied at Darul Uloom Deoband before migrating to Pakistan.

 

 

 

Sana-ul Haque aka Asim Umar was the chief of the AQIS since its inception. He was among the top leaders of Al-Qaeda and was killed in a joint US-Afghan raid on a Taliban hideout in Musa Qala district of Helmand province of Afghanistan. He was killed on September 23, according to the Afghan national directorate of security.

 

His killing was seen as a big breakthrough in the fight against terror. His identification had been fiercely protected by Al-Qaeda. Asim Umar did not have any known digital footprint. He did not release any taped message nor was he photographed. So this new development seems to be an unusual one!

Asim Umar's identity as Sana-ul Haque became public following arrests of suspected Al-Qaeda operatives Mohmmad Asif and Abdul Rehman by the Delhi Police. These arrests helped security agencies prepare a career sketch of the AQIS chief. Designated as a global terrorist by the US, Asim Umar was in early 40s and had been living in Pakistan for years. The AQIS leader had graduated from the Darul Uloom seminary in Deoband. Later, he travelled to Pakistan in mid-1990s, severing ties with his family, the arrested al-Qaeda suspects told the police.

 

 

In Pakistan, Sana-ul Haque enrolled at the Darul Uloom Haqqania Nowshera, which is widely known as the University of Jihad. He joined Harkat ul-Mujahideen, a Pakistan-based terror outfit group founded by Masood Azhar, the UN-designated terrorist. 

Harkat-ul-Mujahideen was among the early terror groups with recruits in India that forged links with al-Qaeda when it was being led by Osama bin Laden. It is not, however, yet clear when Sana-ul Haque assumed the identity of Asim Umar and joined al-Qaeda.

But agencies believe he shifted to al-Qaeda during a major terror network realignment in Pakistan that followed a confrontation between the Pakistan Army and hardliner cleric Abdul Aziz Ghazi, the head of the Lal Masjid of Islamabad.

Then Pakistan President Pervez Musharraf sent the army to the Lal Masjid over Ghazi's assertion that sharia be imposed in Pakistan. His group had attacked Chinese health workers, government buildings and army establishments in order to have their way.

AQIS, under Asim Umar, claimed responsibility for some major terror attacks in Afghanistan, Pakistan and Bangladesh. The first major attack that brought AQIS to the global terror map was the attack on a naval dockyard in Karachi in September 2014. Al-Qaeda terrorists tried to hijack a Pakistan Navy frigate. The attempt failed.

The terror group has since owned a series of attacks on activists, bloggers and writers in Bangladesh as well as the murder of a US embassy staffer in that country.

In India, Asim Umar had been declared a fugitive by a Delhi court. The Indian agencies were in touch with Interpol as well as the US and Afghan agencies to track his activities and counter his recruitment bids in the country.

However, he was killed in 2019.