ARRESTED: Islamic State’s Maldivian Mole Mohamad Ameen

ARRESTED: Islamic State’s Maldivian Mole Mohamad Ameen

In a significant turn of events, on October 23 Maldivian security agencies arrested Mohamad Ameen, an Islamist militant recruiter associated with Islamic State (IS). His arrest came around a month after the Presidential Commission on Deaths and Disappearances named him as the leader of an IS-linked group operating in the Maldives. Ameen’s arrest came as a surprise for many in the region, as successive governments in the Maldives had earlier failed to act against a homegrown Islamist-criminal gang nexus and radicalized Maldivians traveling abroad for jihad in Syria and Afghanistan.

A week after his name emerged in the Commission’s September 2019 report, the U.S. Department of Treasury added Ameen’s name to its terrorist list and imposed sanctions on him.  The listing noted that he had “materially assisted, sponsored, or provided financial, material, or technological support for, or goods or services to or in support of, IS-Khorasan (IS-K).” (U.S. Treasury OFAC, September 10).

Since 2016, Maldivian governments intermittently attempted to have a robust national policy to prevent rising violent extremism in the Indian Ocean archipelago. However, successive governments in the Maldives often downplayed the threat posed by jihadist groups influencing domestic Islam and groups enticing Maldivians to participate in conflicts and terrorist activities abroad. This lackadaisical posture toward the growing menace of domestic extremism has changed drastically after a series of targeted threats and Islamist-inspired killings in the country in the last several years.

An empowered Presidential Commission under Husnu al-Suood confirmed in early September 2019 that both al-Qaeda and IS are active in the country and have been recruiting fighters for the Syrian and Afghan conflict zones. The Commission’s interim report specifically named Mohamed Ameen as the leader of the IS-affiliated group and Mohamed Mazeed as the leader of the al-Qaeda faction in the Maldives. According to the report, a split in the al-Qaeda-linked emerged within the jihadist group in June 2014. While one faction supported al-Qaeda and its affiliate Jabhat Fatah al-Sham (formerly, al-Nusra front) in Syria, the other faction pledged allegiance to Islamic State led by Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi. Both the factions used the al-Furqan and al-Noor mosques in the capital Male as centers of jihadist activities, including for the recruitment of radicalized Maldivians and in order to send them to fight in Syria (Maldives Independent, September 1).

Though detailed information about Ameen’s activities and his networks in the Maldives is sketchy and still emerging, available information suggests that his involvement in terrorism in the country dates back to September 2007, when the first-ever terrorist bombing took place in Male. A crude improvised explosive device (IED) explosion injured several foreign nationals in Sultan Park in the capital, including tourists from China, Japan, and the United Kingdom. The attack was clearly targeted against the country’s flourishing tourism industry and its supposed un-Islamic practices that diluted the local Islamic culture. A large-scale crackdown across the country prompted extremists to flee, mostly to Pakistan and Sri Lanka. Ameen, who was one of the suspected militants involved in the Sultan Park bombing, fled to Pakistan before the incident. However, a subsequent Interpol red notice helped locate and capture him in Sri Lanka in 2011, when he entered that country with a forged passport (Edition, October 24). He was intercepted at Payagala, Sri Lanka on the  Galle road with two fake Maldivian passports as well as a Pakistani passport in his possession (Minivan News Archive, October 15, 2011). This arrest did not last long, as the Maldivian criminal court set him free from police custody in May 2012 “on the condition that he not get involved in any terrorist activities in the country, and he would not leave the country.” (Minivan News Archive, May 12, 2012).

Now in his mid-30s (he was born in May 1984), Ameen was reportedly educated in Male’s Majeediyya school and went on to become the school prefect in 1997 at the age of 13. What happened after his schooling and how he entered the world of Islamist extremism remains a mystery. Ameen is said to have joined the little-known Maldivian extremist group, Jama’ath-ul Muslimeen (JuM), which was sympathetic to al-Qaeda and the Taliban in Pakistan. At least two of JuM’s leaders, Asif Ibrahim and Ali Jaleel, have tried to establish JuM’s foothold in Maldives, though unsuccessfully. Like Ameen, Ali Jaleel also studied in the prestigious Majeediyya school. He died in Pakistan in late May 2009 when he carried a suicide attack on Pakistan’s Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI) headquarters in Lahore (Express Tribune, March 6, 2013). It is intriguing to note that the same Majeediyya school that produced some of the most famous Maldivians—including five of the country’s presidents—also includes Islamist extremists like Ameen and Jaleel on its list of alumni.

According to the U.S. Treasury Department, Ameen was an active recruiter for IS until April 2019. He and his associates held regular recruitment sessions under the guise of Islamic classes in Male. He even used his house as a base for recruitment and indoctrination activities (U.S. Treasury, September 10). One of the interesting facts is that Ameen and his followers recruited people from various Maldivian criminal gangs and enticed them to join IS’s jihad. A specific case mentioned by the U.S. Treasury Department shows a lot about his position in the IS ranks. Ameen reportedly recruited and sent a Maldivian national to work in Afghanistan for the IS-Khurasan branch for a monthly pay of $700, specifically to translate Islamist literature for Ameen back in Maldives (U.S. Treasury, September 10).

Ameen and his group were also found to be behind a spate of robberies in the capital, including the theft of approximately $149,000 (2.3 million Maldivian rufiyaa) in March 2019. In this daring daylight robbery, some four men attacked an Indian national and fled with the cash near the State Bank of India branch in Male (Maldives Independent, March 11; Maldives Independent, September 1).

The Maldivian security and political establishment have consistently overlooked various signs of IS’ burgeoning influence in the country. IS announced the establishment of a Maldives branch on the group’s Facebook page in the last week of July 2014. In the following months, IS flags were hoisted in the capital’s Raalhugandu area and used as banners and placards during a protest march against Israel’s Operation Protective Edge in Gaza. In September that year, hundreds of people marched in Male carrying IS black flags and calling for enforcement of Islamic Shariah (Minivan News Archive, September 06, 2014; Twitter.com/hisaanhussain, August 2, 2014). In subsequent months and years, news emerged of Maldivians fighting and dying alongside radical Islamist groups in Syria and Iraq (both for al-Qaeda and IS) intermittently, leaving the government befuddled and clueless (Minivan Archive, October 23, 2014; Minivan News Archive, January 08, 2015). Only then did the Sunni Muslim-majority South Asian country realize that a flourishing, grassroots radical Islamist surge was underway in its own backyard. This situation ultimately prompted the current government to list some 17 terrorist groups under the “Terrorism Prevention Act” in September 2019. This list includes IS, al-Qaeda, Jabhat al-Nusra, Lashkar-e-Taiba (LeT), and al-Qaeda in the Indian Subcontinent (AQIS), among others (The Edition, September 20).

Recently, a number of Maldivian fighters and their families surrendered to the Afghan government in the country’s eastern Nangarhar province. This news has reinforced the fact that a robust IS network was in operation in Maldives and that Ameen was at the center of the IS operations in the country (The Sun, November 20). More information about Ameen’s support system and his work for IS in Syria, Iraq, and Afghanistan is expected to emerge as investigations into IS’s influence in the country continues. It is imperative that the security agencies unravel Ameen’s deep-rooted recruitment network in the troubled island nation.