State cites ISIS in Durban trial – but experts urge extreme care

The state gave a taste of its case against 11 suspects accused of terrorism this week in a bail hearing at the Verulam Family Court, and it carried one bombshell acronym at its centre: ISIS.

Affidavits filed by the Hawks team investigating the May 2018 attack on a Shi’a mosque in Verulam and a series of attempted bombings around Durban in July claimed that the 11 men in the dock had links to ISIS.

In court papers, the Hawks say that raids on the homes of the suspects unearthed copies of the ISIS “magazine” Rumiyah – carrying information on how to wage jihad – together with eight ISIS flags. The ISIS propaganda was found at a property belonging to businessman Farhad Hoomer, who is accused number one in the case.

Police allege that Hoomer was the ringleader of the gang and that his home was used as a “training facility” for ISIS-inspired acts of violence. It was also from Hoomer’s property that a kidnapped Tanzanian man was rescued after several weeks’ imprisonment.

According to the Hawks, CCTV footage places a number of the men at the scenes of the Woolworths stores around Durban where incendiary devices were planted in July. Some of the suspects were allegedly also identified by eye-witnesses leaving the Shi’a mosque in Verulam where the fatal attack was carried out in May.

The 11 men face a long list of charges, but the aspect of the case which is now certain to garner the most attention is the allegation that the suspects appear to have links to ISIS.

The court revelation follows months of official denials from authorities that there could be an extremist element underpinning the crimes, together with virtual consensus from experts that significant ISIS “signatures” were missing. Most notably, the fact that ISIS had not publicly claimed responsibility for the attacks was seen as a strong suggestion that the organisation could not be behind them in a formal capacity.

Yet others disagreed. The national leader of South Africa’s Shi’a community, Moulana Aftab Haider, was adamant in his conviction immediately after the mosque attack that ISIS had played some role.

“This is a terrorist crime. It is an attack on the sanctity of a place of worship and‚ furthermore‚ it is the indiscriminate killing of innocent people purely based upon their religious beliefs. This has all the hallmarks of the ISIS style of operation in Iraq and Syria‚” Haider was quoted as saying.

UCT’s Professor Abdulkader Tayob, meanwhile, told Daily Maverick in May that it was not unprecedented for such attacks to be launched by groups like ISIS in order to foment anti-Muslim sentiment in societies and create a fertile ground from that for the recruitment of extremists.

“The slitting of the throat [in the Verulam mosque attack] is something we have seen elsewhere by ISIS,” Tayob said.

Yet the evidence presented to the Verulam Family Court thus far – in the form of ISIS flags and propaganda – seems a relatively insubstantial basis on which to make the case that the suspects were operating as an active ISIS cell in South Africa.

When Daily Maverick put this to the Institute for Security Studies’ William Els on Wednesday, however, Els expressed his conviction that further damning evidence is to follow.

“It is still early days and what we have learned from the case so far will, I believe, only be the ears of the hippo,” Els said.

“They will not make all their evidence known during the bail applications and will just share enough to secure that the guys are denied bail.”

He added that prosecutors had probably focused on items like ISIS flags and handbooks at this stage to “catch the eye” of the court.

“The team that is investigating this case is very experienced and were also investigating the Boeremag case that was one of the most successful prosecutions of terror related incidents in our history. They will not go to court with a case of this nature that they cannot win. There is just too much at stake.”

But fellow terrorism expert Jasmine Opperman, of the Terrorism Research & Analysis Consortium (TRAC), takes a dimmer view.

“A concerning factor is that the Hawks and police are now stating that South Africa has crossed a threshold prone to violent attacks by organised international terror groups,” Opperman says.

“Question is: Where is the evidence? The Thulsie case has already seen a state stumbling along in putting evidence on the table.”

Opperman stresses that the presence of Islamic State sympathisers in South Africa is by now beyond dispute.

But she suggests that the evidence thus far produced by the state in the Verulam Family Court “at best shows low-level influence [of ISIS] via propaganda messages, and [suspects] cannot be assumed as committed Islamic State loyalists”.

Opperman says that the suspects may fall into a new category of ISIS sympathiser she terms “Wannabes”.

She explains that Wannabes are “frustrated fighters” driven by a mixture of personal problems, criminality and grievances, lured by a “quick solution to redemption”.

Such individuals now need only a computer in order to be radicalised, “in which fake news is CNN and BBC, and Telegram chat rooms are the battleground for facts and encouragement”.

Opperman describes herself as “really worried” about the handling of the Durban case.

“[Authorities] are creating fear and stigmatisation playing right into the hands of international terror groups,” she warns.

As news of the ISIS development in the case hit social media this week, it was inevitably accompanied by expressions of Islamophobia.

The Muslim Judicial Council told Daily Maverick that it would not comment on the case until it was concluded.

But spokesperson Mishka Daries added: “Should the evidence come to the fore that the suspects are linked to ISIS, as community representatives we will support authorities – as we have done previously as citizens of South Africa – so that we may uncover and rid society of extremist elements.” DM