Court papers show that the NIA has filed a case which deals with conspiracy, support, abetment or incitement to carry out a terrorist act against the arrested.
An American citizen, Matthew Aaron VanDyke, was arrested by the National Investigation Agency (NIA) on March 13 along with six Ukrainian nationals. The agency said all of them had entered India on tourist visas illegally and were working in close contact with anti-India insurgent groups.
Officials identified the six Ukrainians as Hurba Petro, Slyviak Taras, Ivan Sukmanovskyi, Stefaniv Marian, Honcharuk Maksim and Kaminskyi Viktor.
Who is Matthew VanDyke?
VanDyke is from Baltimore in the US state of Maryland. According to his website, he has worked as a soldier, an international businessman, a war correspondent and a columnist.
In January and February 2009, Matthew VanDyke worked as a war correspondent for The Baltimore Examiner, where he was embedded with US forces in Iraq.
He claims to be a veteran of the Libyan revolution, was held as a prisoner of war there, and later set up a military contracting company called SOLI (Sons of Liberty International).
According to the website, SOLI “operates on a non-profit model to provide free security and military consulting and training to communities fighting terrorism, insurgency, and oppressive regimes”.
The case against them
Court papers show that the NIA has filed a case under section 18 of the Unlawful Activities (Prevention) Act, 1967, which deals with conspiracy, support, abetment or incitement to carry out a terrorist act, as mentioned in an earlier HT report.
A Delhi court on Monday sent all seven to NIA custody until March 27. The agency informed the court that it is also looking for eight more Ukrainians. It said all 15 had entered India on tourist visas illegally, adding that the groups they trained in Myanmar had links to anti-India insurgent organisations.
The accused “entered India on tourist visa on separate dates and flew to Guwahati and thereafter, they travelled to Mizoram without requisite documents – Restricted Area Permit (RAP)/Protected Area Permit (PAP) and entered Myanmar illegally and they were to collect a pre-scheduled training for Myanmar-based ethnic armed groups (EAGs), known to support terror organisations/gangs operating in India in the domain of drone warfare, drone operations, assembly and jamming technology, etc targeting the Myanmar Junta,” the NIA’s submission to the court said.
The agency told the court that VanDyke and the six Ukrainians admitted during questioning that they trained these armed groups more than once. It also said they were involved in illegally bringing large shipments of drones from Europe into Myanmar through India for use by these groups.
“The EAGs they were training and supplying with weapons and other terrorist hardware are known to be supporting some banned Indian Insurgent Groups (IIGs), which affects the national security and interest of India,” an NIA officer told HT, declining to be named. “We are trying to unearth the entire conspiracy, and a hunt is on for others.”