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India rejects entry for ISIS brides: No homecoming..

Kerala: The Indian women from Kerala who had followed their husbands to join the Islamic State in Khorasan Province (ISKP) are unlikely to be permitted to return to the nation. According to the reports, a senior government official has confirmed that the four Kerala-based women, who had moved to Nangarhar in Afghanistan in the years 2016-18, will not be permitted to revert to the nation. Nonetheless, their husbands were killed in different attacks in Afghanistan. The Kerala-based Muslim women were among thousands of Islamic State terrorists who surrendered before the Afghanistan officials in November and December 2019. India will not be the first country to deny entry to women who married ISIS fighters. Britain and France have both taken a firm stand to prevent those women from coming home.

The four women were identified as Sonia Sebastian alias Ayisha, Merrin Jacob alias Mariyam, Nimisha alias Fathima Isa and Raffaela. According to senior executives, two other Indian women and a man had also capitulated to the officials. Ahmad Zia Saraj, the chief of Afghanistan’s National Directorate of Security, announced that 408 members of the Islamic State from 13 countries are suffering in Afghanistan prisons. This included four Indians, 16 Chinese, 299 Pakistanis, two Bangladeshis, two from the Maldives, who had entered IS in the past. Saraj had also said the Afghanistan government was in talks with various countries to deport the prisoners. There has so far been no formal remark on the situation of these women. But deciding by the model set by Britain and France, where neither the women who left to marry ISIS fighters nor their children were permitted to return the four women could be looking at a long legal battle.

While Afghan officials refused to comment, senior officials in Kabul indicated that they are expecting confirmation from Delhi to deport these four Kerala-based women. As per the reports, there is no accord among different government agencies on the return of the four women, and it was doubtful that they would be permitted to come back. In December 2019, a month after the surrender, the Indian investigation agencies talked to the four women living with children in Kabul. During the interview, the investigation agencies observed that they have a strong attitude in favor of Islamic terrorism, and therefore, India is possible to request the Afghanistan authority to pursue the women there itself.

“One line of thought was to allow them to come back and become an approver in the cases here. However, their interview revealed that they are highly radicalized. The France model may be followed, and the Afghanistan authorities can be requested to put them on trial there,” said the official to the Hindu. Meanwhile, Interpol has circulated red notices against the women at India’s request. According to the charge sheet registered by the National Investigation Agency (NIA) in 2017, Sebastian had fled from India in 2016 to join the ISKP in Afghanistan with a group of 21 men and women from Kerala. They had crossed over to Afghanistan on foot from Iran.

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Sonia Sebastian, who hails from Kasargod in Kerala, left India on May 31, 2016, with her husband, Abdul Rashid Abdulla, from Mumbai airport. They had said the couple held secret classes backing IS and jihad during the last segment of Ramzan in Padanna and Kasaragod. Sonia is an engineering graduate. Another IS sympathizer, Merrin Jacob alias Mariyam, was married to Bestin Vincent, a resident of Palakkad. The couple fled to Afghanistan in 2016 to live in the IS-controlled region. Later, the Chrisitan couple converted to Islam after their marriage, and Vincent assumed the identity of Yahya. Vincent was later assassinated in Afghanistan. Vincent’s brother Bexon and his wife, Nimisha alias Fathima, also converted to Islam and went to Afghanistan with them. Raffaela was married to a 37-year-old physician Ijaz Kallukettiya Purayil a physician from Kasargod.

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