Some J&K terrorists trained in Europe: report

A number of Islamic terrorists trained in Europe are engaged in insurgency in Jammu and Kashmir, a media report in Washington said on Wednesday.

Two terrorists who received training and attended sermons in Eindhoven in the Netherlands were killed by Indian troops in the state last year, The Wall Street Journal reported quoting the Dutch domestic intelligence agency AVID.

Al Qaeda terrorists linked to the September 11 attacks in the United States also attended sermons in Eindhoven, it said.

Besides the Netherlands, jihadi training centres also exist in Germany and France, the report said.

The most active group providing training is the Al-Waqf al-Islami Foundation, which arranges sermons in the Al-Furquan mosque in Eindhoven and is funded by wealthy Saudis, it said.

Since the 1980s, the Al-Waqf sermons have drilled extremist messages into the heads of thousands of Muslim youths from across Europe, the Journal said.

Among the most famous attendees of these sermons were six men from Hamburg, Germany, who allegedly plotted the September 11 attacks, it said.

In France, investigators have raised concerns about the l'Institut European des Sciences Humaines at the Chateau-Chinon in the Burgundy region. One member of the Hamburg terrorist cell took a correspondence course offered by the intitute, the daily said.

In Germany, Hans des Islam, an organisation in the small town of Lutzelbach near Frankfurt, is under observation, according to German intelligence officers. The organisation was set up in the 1980s with cash smuggled in from the Middle East.

PTI