The United States have deported an Indian convicted of terror funding on Tuesday. 40-year-old Ibrahim Zubair Mohammad was convicted in a terror-financing case in the USA and was sentenced to five years of jail. He landed in India on Wednesday after he was deported as his jail term was over. He is currently isolated at a quarantine centre in Amritsar, Punjab.
Mohammad, an engineer from Telangana capital Hyderabad, was arrested in 2011 for providing monetary and material assistance to Al Qaeda leader Anwar al-Awalki. He was sentenced to jail for five years after he had pleaded guilty of the charges. According to the US justice department, he was accused of financing terrorism in a bid to support violent jihad against Us military personnel in Iraq.
According to the US justice department, Ibrahim Zubair Mohammad, along with two Pakistani nationals Asif Ahmed Salim, and Sultane Room Salim, had pleaded guilty of financing terrorism, as they had transferred thousands of dollars to Anwar al-Awlaki to support violent jihad against U.S. military personnel in Iraq, Afghanistan and other places in the world in 2009.
Zubair’s brother Yahya Farooq Mohammad was sentenced to 27½ years of jail, because he had also hired a hitman to kill a judge hearing a terror case.
In 2009 Farooq Mohammad and two other people had travelled to Yemen and gave around $22000 to Al Qaeda leader Anwar al-Awalki’s associates. $17000 of this amount was given by Asif and Sultane in the USA. Ibrahim Zubair Mohammad had facilitated in transferring the money to Farooq overseas so that the same can be handed over to the Al Qaeda leader. Farooq had moved to Dubai, and has used Zubair’s US address for bank transactions. Zubair had collected cheques from Asif Salim and Sultane Salim, and deposited in his brothers account. Between 2004 and 2009, approximately 50-60 transactions were made by Ibrahim Zubair Mohammad in his brother Yahya Farooq Mohammad’s account.
According to justice department statement, Ibrahim Mohammad is an Indian citizen who studied engineering at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign from 2001 through 2005. In or around 2006, he moved to Toledo, Ohio, and married a U.S. citizen. He became a lawful permanent resident of the United States in or around 2007.
After Zbair landed in India on Wednesday after he was flown in a special flight, Indian security officials questioned him to find out if he had any terror links in India. According to the officials, he seem to have been self-radicalised after watching videos of al Qaeda leader Anwar al-Awlaki.
