While Sri Lanka Easter suicide attacks mastermind Zahran Hashim used social media to publicly call for the death of non-Muslims, he worked for months in private chatrooms to persuade six young men to sacrifice themselves, Muslim community leaders say.
Christians and foreign tourists were badly hit in the attacks on three churches and three hotels that killed 257 people, but Sri Lanka’s Muslim community has also been badly scarred and has been looking into the backgrounds of Hashim and his jihadist acolytes.
“We believe Zahran radicalised these people using Facebook,” said R. Abdul Razik, a leader of the moderate Ceylon Thowheed Jama’ath group.Investigators and community leaders believe the group also used social media private messenges to keep in touch without being noticed by the authorities.
“We were told it is better to allow him to have the page so that the authorities could keep an eye on what he was doing.” Ilham Ibrahim died at the Shangri-La hotel while his brother Inshaf Ibrahim bombed the Cinnamon Grand.
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