Mumbai April 12 : Pakistani bomb-making expert linked to the 2008 Mumbai attack is among scores of trained terrorists who slipped into the EU posing as refugees to join the Islamic State’s plot to commit atrocities in Europe, a media report said on Sunday.
Muhammad Usman Ghani, who is linked to the Lashkar-e-Taiba (LeT) and Lashkar-e-Jhangvi terror groups, is being held in Austria on charges of participating in a terrorist organisation, news reports said.
The ISIS “strike team” sent to Europe before last November’s Paris attacks included Usman, the veteran bomb-maker from Pakistan.
LeT was behind the Mumbai attack that left 166 people dead.
The disclosure come from sources close to a multinational investigation who warn more “large-scale” assaults on European countries, including Britain, are “imminent”. Dozens of the ISIS operatives are still at large, the report said.
Usman, 34, and a suspected Algerian ISIS fighter named as Adel Haddadi, 28, have been questioned by Austrian and French authorities after being linked to the terrorist gang that killed 130 people in Paris last November.
Investigators believe both men are part of an unknown number of Isis “strike teams” that used the migrant flow to infiltrate Europe last year. A network of jihadists based on the Continent has provided extensive logistic support, from fake identity documents to safe houses.
