Twitter user who praised Isis fighters arrested

Indian police have arrested a 24-year-old Twitter user believed to be behind an influential pro-Islamic account followed by many jihadist fighters and would-be recruits.

Mehdi Masroor Biswas is alleged to be behind the Twitter account @ShamiWitness, which had 17,700 followers before it was shut down following a report by Channel 4 News on Thursday.

Tweets from the account contained extremist propaganda – including footage of executions – as well as information for would-be recruits and messages praising fallen fighters as martyrs.

Police in Bangalore seized Biswas’s mobile phone, laptop and other documents for evidence when they raided his apartment early on Saturday morning

LR Pachuau, police director general, said Biswas confessed to operating the Twitter account. Pachuau said Biswas used to tweet after gathering information from TV and news websites on the situation in Iraq, Syria and the rest of the troubled region.

However, authorities say that Biswas does not appear to have a direct link to the Islamic Stat eor any other extremist group. He also never recruited anyone or facilitated such an activity in India, Bangalore’s top police official, M.N. Reddy, said.

Biswas is nevertheless being charged with waging a war or abetting the waging of war against powers friendly to India – a crime which may result in a maximum 10-year prison term.

Biswas was particularly close to English-speaking terrorists and had become a source of “incitement and information” for young people trying to join Isis.

Senior police officers and intelligence analysts in India are concerned about signs of sympathy for Isis among a small segment of young Muslims, some of whom have travelled to join the group. Estimates of how many vary from around 50 to more than 200.

Biswas has denied any wrongdoing.

“I’ve not harmed anybody, I haven’t broken any laws of the country, haven’t waged any war against India … I’ve not waged any war against any allies of India,” he told the channel.

Isis has established a reputation for extensive use of social media, though experts point out that it is often third parties who are not formally part of the group who play the biggest role in spreading propaganda.