The Islamic State (IS) bomber who stormed the Kabul airport in August 2021 during the Taliban takeover of Afghanistan was sent on a suicide mission to India in 2017, a new magazine by the Islamic State in Khorasan Province (ISKP) has claimed.
This claim is in addition to the one made by ISKP in 2021 that the bomber was deported from India in 2017.
The bomber, identified as Abdur Rehman Al-Logari (25), had walked into a crowd outside Kabul airport on August 26, 2021, killing more than 150 persons who were trying to leave the country after the Taliban took over the reins there. The deceased included 13 members of the U.S Marines. The son of a wealthy merchant in Afghanistan, Logari enrolled himself in an engineering college in Faridabad, and stayed on rent in Lajpat Nagar.
The Hindu could independently verify that he was deported to Afghanistan in 2017 but it’s unclear whether the security agencies then had an inkling of what the ISKP is claiming now.
A senior government officer said he could not share details as his “lips are sealed”.
The New York Times reported in January that Logari frequently visited India and Pakistan on business. The report said that he moved to India in 2017 to study engineering at the Manav Rachna University near Delhi. The report added that Logari was “arrested” after the “C.I.A tipped off Indian intelligence agents that he was plotting a suicide bombing in New Delhi”.
After being caught, he was handed over to the CIA. by India’s foreign spy service, the Research and Analysis Wing (R&AW). “Indian authorities foiled the attack and turned Logari over to the CIA, which sent him to Afghanistan to serve time at the Parwan prison at Bagram Air Base. He remained there until he was freed amid the chaos after Kabul fell,” the NYT report said.
The e-magazine in English called Voice of Khurasan, released on various Telegram channels on Tuesday night, said that in 2017, Logari “was given a mission to go to India for a suicide mission approved by the Wilayath Khurasan”. The magazine was shared with The Hindu by an Indian intelligence official.
It said that he travelled to Delhi and got admission in a private university as cover for his mission. The magazine claimed that he prepared for the mission “with the help of a few brothers in the country”. He was arrested one week before the attack, after one of his associates was arrested by the Indian intelligence services, the propaganda magazine claimed. He was interrogated by the Indian agencies and deported to Afghanistan where he was further investigated by the ClA and sentenced to five years in prison on charges of having links to the Islamic State, it claimed. He was moved to Bagram prison on the request of the CIA in the fourth year of prison sentence. After the Taliban takeover in August, around 2,000 prisoners and IS members broke open the jails and fled. Logari offered to carry out the suicide mission at the Kabul airport.
The magazine claimed that Logari was abandoned by his family. It said that he studied in Pakistan and “chose journalism as a career path”.
Mainly comprising defectors from Tehrik-i-Taliban (TTP), the Wilayat Khorasan of Islamic State or ISKP in Afghanistan came into existence in 2015. Senior government officials assert that the ISKP is run by Pakistan’s Inter State Intelligence (ISI). The ISKP is engaged in an armed conflict with the Taliban.