Arib Fayyaz Majeed, a civil engineer by training from Panvel in Maharashtra, travelled to join the ISIS with four friends in May, 2014. He returned to India last November and has been in custody since.
Arib Fayyaz Majeed, the 23-year-old man from Mumbai who joined the ISIS last year and returned months later, has during his interrogation detailed how the terror group uses social media to recruit people.
Arib told interrogators that soon after he
graduated from an ISIS training school as a
fidayeen or suicide bomber and was about to set off on his first mission, an ISIS woman recruiter - who he had never met but had been in touch with on social media - posted on Facebook that she had married Arib Majeed.
Arib said he was also asked to share his Facebook password so that she could use his account to contact and recruit more people from India.
The ISIS, known for its glib propaganda, has attracted thousands from across the world to join it, many of them lured by the promise of getting Syrian women as brides.
Being able to marry a Syrian woman was one of the reasons why a Chennai-based computer professional said he left to join the ISIS early this year. NDTV had interviewed the man recently; he escaped and returned to India without formally joining the group or taking part in any terror activity and is now undergoing a de-radicalization and rehabilitation programme.
Arib has in his interrogation also described how women are sexually exploited and ill-treated by the ISIS. All captured women are used as sex slaves, he has said.
"I thought they are fighting to establish an Islamic State, but I saw ISIS fighters treating women worse than animals," he has told his interrogators.
"The details about how women are treated are gruesome. We decided to omit them from the interrogation report altogether," a senior official who interrogated Arib told NDTV.
A civil engineer by training from Panvel in Maharashtra, Arib travelled to join the ISIS with four friends in May, 2014. He returned to India last November and has been in custody since.
He was questioned by security agencies and is now being prosecuted for several offences, including waging war against a friendly state - Syria. He has told interrogators that he was trained to be a suicide bomber, but made three failed attempts before he returned.