New Delhi: Hot on the trail of foreign-based handlers of the banned Hizb-ut-Tahrir (HuT), who operate through encrypted communication platforms, the National Investigation Agency (NIA) has approached the Swiss and German authorities seeking cooperation in its probe, ThePrint has learnt.
Through the Ministry of Home Affairs (MHA), the agency has sent a request to the authorities in Switzerland seeking assistance regarding Proton Mail, a highly encrypted email service headquartered in Geneva. In Germany, the agency has reached out to the authorities seeking assistance to probe accounts on Tuta (formerly Tutanota) Mail, another highly encrypted email service hosted in the nation, sources privy to the probe said.
Probing the linkages of its operatives, the NIA sleuths have found that some of the accounts issuing instructions to operatives in India were operating on Proton Mail and Tuta Mail, according to the sources.
India has shared a Mutual Legal Assistance Treaty (MLAT) with Switzerland since 1989, while an MLAT was signed with Germany in October 2024.
The HuT—formed as a splinter group of the Egypt-based Muslim Brotherhood in 1953 to propagate fundamentalism and overthrow democratic governments—was declared a terrorist outfit by India in 2024 while Germany outlawed it in 2003.
The outfit has also been declared as a terrorist organisation by countries such as the UK, Egypt, Bangladesh, Pakistan and several Central Asian and Arabian nations.
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HuT module in India
The particular case in which the NIA has approached the Swiss and German authorities stems from the Chennai Crime Branch’s action in May 2024, which booked and arrested Hameed Hussain, Ahamed Mansoor, Abdul Rahman, Mohamed Maurice and Khader Nawaz Sheriff, alias Javid, alleged to be HuT operatives.
An FIR was registered based on the contents of a YouTube channel named ‘Dr Hameed Hussain’, with Hussain identified as the chief coordinator of the HuT in India.
In the video that formed the basis of the FIR, the Chennai Crime Branch documented that Hussain was propagating messages stating: “Whereas in Palestine people have been fighting, we have been offering prayers, observing fast and byhearting verses of the Quran. We are not talking about their struggle, nor are the Islamic governments; we don’t utter a word about Khilafat, Sharia, etc. Firstly, Muslims must not think in terms of nationalism, we are not nationalists, followers of democracy or secularism, but we are Muslims and must abide by the tenets of Islam.”
“Religious freedom, right to property, right to opinion, individual rights, all these are antithetical to Islam. Whether voting is halal in a system where rules have been framed by kafirs (disbelievers) and not by Allah? It is definitely haram as sovereignty belongs to Sharia rule and the authority to legislate has been given only to Allah. Democracy is kufr (disbelief) as the sovereignty in democracy belongs to people,” was another content of Hussain’s video, according to the FIR of the Chennai Crime Branch, seen by ThePrint.
According to the NIA, Hussain was based in Chennai’s Royapettah and had been conducting secret classes every Sunday at the city’s Modern Essential Education Trust (MEET) hall, where he allegedly advocated the establishment of an Islamic Caliphate and disseminated anti-national content to spread disaffection and incite communal discord.
In its chargesheet, the NIA alleged that the operatives of HuT worked on a three-stage programme developed by the outfit’s founder, Sheikh Taqi-al-din al-Nabhani—culturing of society through recruitment of operatives, public and mass address advocating for a caliphate, and taking over control of the nation state with the help of established Muslim armies, foreign assistance and through military coups.
An Islamist scholar of Palestinian origin, al-Nabhani founded the HuT in 1953, with the outfit operating across 50 countries, primarily with the strategy of infiltrating into the armies of Muslim-majority countries to facilitate coups.
The group first burst into prominence after allegedly orchestrating a protest outside the Indian High Commission in London in the wake of the abrogation of Article 370 in 2019.
Then, in December 2020, the Madurai police registered a case against one Mohammed Iqbal, who was alleged to be in touch with ISIS (Islamic State) and HuT operatives through digital media. The case originated from a Facebook post by Iqbal that attempted to stoke communal tension.
The NIA took over the probe in April 2021 and registered a case when the Madurai police filed another case involving alleged HuT operatives. In the second FIR, the Madurai police documented one Abdullah alias Sarvanakumar as having posted “incendiary messages” on social media to instigate people and wage a religious war against India.
The counter-terrorism agency filed chargesheets in both cases alleging that the accused were from the HuT and were trying to recruit youth to establish a caliphate in the country on the lines of the draft constitution written by the HuT founder.
The agency also alleged that HuT operatives were organising meetings to recruit members, conducting secret classes to indoctrinate and radicalise youth, and propagating the ideology of the group to establish new cells in districts of Tamil Nadu and Kerala.
(Edited by Nida Fatima Siddiqui)
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