(MENAFN- Khaleej Times) Britains Channel 4 News named the pro-militant tweeter ShamiWitness as Mehdi but did not reveal his full name as he said his life would be in danger.
London: An influential Twitter account supporting the ISIS militant group was run by an executive from Bangalore in India Britain’s Channel 4 News reported.
The channel named the pro-militant tweeter “ShamiWitness” as “Mehdi” but did not reveal his full name as he said his life would be in danger. “He is an executive in Bangalore working for an Indian conglomerate” the channel said on Thursday.
The report quoted him as saying that he had not joined ISIS ranks in Iraq and Syria because his family was financially dependent on him.
“If I had a chance to leave everything and join them I might have” he was quoted as saying.
The account which had 17700 followers including many foreign fighters was shut down following the Channel 4 report.
“He has until now been able to remain anonymous avoiding questions about his motives and his central role in the ISIS’s propaganda war but a Channel 4 News investigation can today reveal that the man operating the account is called Mehdi and he is an executive in Bangalore working for an Indian conglomerate” the report claimed.
“His tweets written under the name Shami Witness were seen two million times each month making him perhaps the most influential ISIS Twitter account” it said.
The Indian police told reporters they were investigating.
“I have seen the report as you have” Bangalore police commissioner MN Reddi said at a media briefing on Friday.
“We have taken note of it and are investigating the matter. “We are ready to face any threat perception to the city. We have set up a special team to study the report and trace the culprit” he said.
The Shami Witness tweets contained militant propaganda as well as information for would-be recruits and messages praising fallen fighters as martyrs.
The ISIS militant group has made extensive use of social media for propaganda and recruitment as well as for disseminating grisly execution videos.
“We often get inputs on the presence of the sleeper cells some times these reports are true some times they turnout to be false. But we take all such inputs seriously” Reddi said. “We go to the bottom of such inputs to check whether the input is true or false and we work on the basis of it.”
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