New Delhi: Long before he was arrested by the National Investigation Agency (NIA) for illegally entering Myanmar through the land border along Mizoram, Matthew VanDyke was a known name in conflict zones across the world. A political science graduate from the University of Maryland, according to the bio on his website, VanDyke was also arrested by the then regime of Muammar Gaddafi in Libya in 2011. He was in prison for nearly six months and came out only when Gaddafi’s regime fell under attack from the rebel forces.
The prison in Libya hardly deterred his enthusiasm for what his organisation calls efforts for the “defenceless and support those struggling for freedom around the world,” as he reappeared in the conflict zone once again in Syria during the Bashar al-Assad regime.
VanDyke is among the seven foreign nationals, mostly from Ukraine, arrested by the NIA on charges of crossing over to Myanmar to carry out “pre-scheduled training for Myanmar-based Ethnic Armed Groups (EAGs)” allegedly using Indian soil to launch “drone warfare, drone operations, assembly and jamming technology, etc., targeting the Myanmar Junta”.
A Delhi court Monday sent all seven to the custody of the NIA for 11 days.
ThePrint earlier reported that the seven foreign nationals had landed in India on a valid visa before they illegally entered Mizoram, a restricted zone for foreign nationals and crossed over to war-torn Myanmar. VanDyke was stopped at Kolkata airport by the Bureau of Immigration before the NIA took him into custody.
Sources aware of the case details said that the section of the Unlawful Activities (Prevention) Act, 1967 has been slapped on the accused because of the allegations that they supported “certain proscribed Indian insurgent groups, by supplying weapons, terrorist hardware and training them,” which directly affected national security.
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‘Adventurer with OCD’
After completing his bachelor’s in political science, VanDyke pursued a master’s degree in Security Studies at Georgetown University. His page claims that he was the youngest of the lot to be accepted into the university’s security studies programme, and that his master’s thesis was based on the reasons why Osama bin Laden-led “Al Qaeda targets” the US.
Claimed to be fascinated by the developments in the Arab world, VanDyke set off on an adventurous bike tour of Africa and the Middle East on a Kawasaki KLR650 motorcycle in 2007. During the adventurous trip that lasted nearly three years, he visited Morocco, Mauritania, Tunisia, Libya, Egypt, Jordan, Syria, Turkey, and finally Iraq.
His page further traced his journey in conflict zones to early 2009, when VanDyke claimed to have worked as a war correspondent for The Baltimore Examiner and to have remained on the battlefield with the US military in Iraq.
Later, towards the end of 2010, VanDyke purportedly also travelled to Afghanistan to report on the US military in Afghanistan as part of a project. He purportedly remained with the US military for a long time, including at one of the remotest military installations in Afghanistan at Forward Operating Base (FOB) Baylough.
His page claimed that he suffered from an Obsessive-Compulsive Disorder, but that did not deter him from taking adventurous trips such as the one in June 2010, when VanDyke, along with a photographer, Daniel Britt, drove motorcycles from Iraq to Afghanistan, by way of Iran.
In 2014, VanDyke formed a not-for-profit called Sons of Liberty International (SOLI), with the stated objective of providing “free security consulting, training, supplies, and other services to vulnerable populations to enable them to defend themselves against terrorists and insurgents.
His profile resembles that of a mercenary, having taken part in several conflicts, either directly or indirectly.
In its about section, SOLI says that it was incorporated to “enable those abandoned by the international community to take action in defence of themselves and others, and to combat those forces that seek to harm and oppress them”.
On his X timeline, VanDyke had in January last year revealed that he has been running “covert operations” with a Venezuelan rebel commander since 2019, “to let Venezuelans know that we’ve been fighting for you, and will continue fighting for you, until Maduro is defeated and democracy is restored”.
“To the leaders of Venezuela, Burma, Iran and other authoritarian regimes, we’re coming for you. Russia cannot protect you anymore. You will share the fate of Assad in Syria. Russia, we are coming for you as well. We relocated to Ukraine in 2022 for this fight,” he further wrote on his X timeline.
(Edited by Nardeep Singh Dahiya)
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