Indian police arrest 'jihadi tweeter'

Indian police on Saturday arrested a 24-year-old believed to be the handler of an influential Twitter account supporting the Islamic State group, officials said. Mehdi Masroor Biswas, who works for an Indian food conglomerate in the southern city of Bangalore, is alleged to be behind the Twitter account @ShamiWitness. The account had 17,700 followers, including many foreigners fighting for the Islamic State group in Syria and Iraq, until it was shut down following a report by Britain's Channel 4 News on Thursday.
Tweets from @ShamiWitness contained jihadist propaganda as well as information for would-be recruits and messages praising fallen fighters as martyrs. Police in Bangalore raided his house in an upscale suburb early Saturday and seized his mobile phone, laptop and other documents for evidence. "On the basis of credible intelligence inputs... we have apprehended Mehdi Masroor Biswas from his rented one-room apartment," police director general L.R. Pachuau said at a news conference.
"He has confessed to the fact that he was operating Shami Witness Twitter account for the last many years... he used to work in the office in the day and became active on the Internet late at night," he said. India's moderate population of 150 million Muslims have not often been drawn into sectarian conflicts in the Middle East and elsewhere. However, an Indian student was recently charged with terror-related offences after he returned home from Iraq where he is alleged to have worked for the jihadists.
Biswas's arrest has further fuelled fears that IS militants are attempting to recruit radicalised Muslim youngsters online. Pachuau said Biswas used to tweet "ferociously" after gathering information from TV and news websites on the situation in Iraq, Syria and the rest of the troubled region. Biswas was "particularly close to English speaking terrorists" and had become a source of "incitement and information" for youngsters trying to join the IS group.
"Through his social media propaganda, he abetted IS in its agenda to wage war against the Asiatic powers," Pachuau said. A preliminary case of abetting war against the state has been registered against Biswas. The Channel 4 report quoted Biswas as saying that he had personally not joined IS ranks in Iraq and Syria because his family was financially dependent on him.