Sabeel Ahmed, terror recruiter and a doctor, who was deported from United Kingdom in 2007 after his elder brother, Kafeel Ahmed, carried out a suicide attack at Glasgow Airport, was arrested on August 28, on arriving in New Delhi after his deportation from Saudi Arabia, where he was detained in connection with an alleged Lashkar-e-Taiba (LeT) recruitment plot registered in Bengaluru (Karnataka) in 2012, reports Indian Express. Sabeel Ahmed, 38, was produced in a Delhi court and will be brought to Bengaluru on a transit warrant, an National Investigation Agency (NIA) source said.
He was first linked to the LeT case in 2013. Fourteen of 17 people arrested (out of 25 accused) in the case have pleaded guilty and have been released after serving jail terms. “A team from NIA’s Bengaluru camp office reached Delhi and arrested him yesterday. He has been produced in court and taken on transit remand,” the NIA source said on August 29.
Sabeel is alleged to have introduced two key players in the suspected LeT recruitment plot of 2010-11 to each other, his brother-in-law Imran Ahmed, a dentist, and a Bengaluru engineer named Mohammed Shahid Faisal alias Ustad. Imran was arrested in 2013 during a visit from Saudi Arabia on a fake passport and Ustad is reported absconding by NIA. Linked in the case following Imran’s arrest, Sabeel had stated in a communiqué from Saudi Arabia: “I am given to understand that the allegation against me is that I have been part of some meetings in Riyadh and Dammam (in Saudi), where these plots were hatched. I categorically deny having attended any such meetings.” “I am also given to understand that I am accused of financing and giving logistical support to the plot. It is ridiculous… I have never had any excess finances to distribute to people without having knowledge of what is done with the money,” he had stated.
In 2017, Ahmed was also named by Delhi Police’s Special Cell of being among a dozen missing Indians who were allegedly trying to establish the Al Qaeda in the Indian Subcontinent (AQIS).