Suspect gives insight into SIMI

Besides electing Shahbaz Hussain as amir president of the group, the following decisions were taken at the meet:

8226; The group8217;s name was changed to Islamic Movement by dropping Students S and India I from the acronym SIMI.

8226; The maximum age bar of 30 years for entry was removed and the membership was made open to all.

8226; The rule of suspending ansars cadres when they went abroad was abolished.

8226; While link with Jamait-e-Ulema Hind was to be maintained, it was decided that the group would not align with any political group.

8226; The central committee with Safdar Nagori as secretary general was abolished and three committees, headed by Kamruddin Nagori, Shibily Peedical Abdul and Hafeez Hussain alias Adnan, were set up to assist Shahbaz.

According to Shahbaz, it was at this meeting that Shibily Abdul, a software engineer from Kerala, was given the charge of Maharashtra and UP, Adnan was told to look after South India and Kamruddin Nagori was asked to oversee the training the cadres as well as handle the Madhya Pradesh operations.

It was at this meeting that Tauqeer, the mastermind behind the Ahmedabad blasts, was asked to interact with ulemas in the country and convince them to support the jehadi movement.

Shahbaz talked about the group setting camps at three places in Indore district and gave details about SIMI top leadership meetings in Yavatmal in 2005, Perambavur in February 2006 and in Ujjain in July 2006.

While the so-called amir confirmed that SIMI8217;s network was largest in Gujarat, he conjectured that bombers used in Jaipur blasts could have come from Madhya Pradesh or neighbouring Gujarat, as the group had difficulty in penetrating Rajasthan.

Shahbaz is understood to have told the security agencies that SIMI had first planned to target Goa in January 2008, but had to pull back after the arrest of LeT-trained Riyazuddin Nasir in Karnataka.