SHAMIWITNESS: INDIAN ENGINEER BEHIND ISIS TWITTER ACCOUNT SET FOR RELEASE

The Twitter profile of "ShamiWitness" had a portrait of Khalid Ibn AI Walid, who was the army commander of the "Army of the Prophet Mohammed" and the subsequent Khalifas. It was not an ordinary Twitter account.

- ABHINANDAN MISHRA

Followed by active fighters and commanders of ISIS also known as ISIL or Daesh, it was an account that reported things as they were happening in Iraq and Syria about how the terrorist organization was killing people, not before torturing them and how it was spreading across the world.

At the time, ISIS was at its peak and intelligence and security agencies around the world were worried how ISIS would strike them and where.

ShamiWitness had developed as the one stop source of information for journalists across the world who wanted to know what the situation on the ground was, as it was assumed that he was a high-ranking ISIS commander who was sharing information from the ground.

When journalists would reach out to him through Twitter Direct messages, including this reporter, with a query or seeking confirmation, he would already have the sought information and in cases where he did not have the information, he would come back with one.

The account, it seemed, was being operated by someone who was putting out content right from Raqqa, Syria, the de facto Caliphate of ISIS or from Mosul in Iraq, much of which was under the control of ISIS.

Who was ShamiWitness? How close was he to the now slain chief of AI Baghdadi? Did the "polite" ShamiWitness travel from one place to the other with Baghdadi?

How close was he to Baghdadi? Was he one of the sons of Baghdadi? No one knew answers to these questions at that time.

However, things were going to change.

On one winter morning of 13 December 2014, India and the entire world woke up to the startling fact that the person who was running "ShamiWitness", the most prominent anonymous voice of ISIS, was an Indian national of barely 24 years of age. And he was not tweeting from Raqqa, but mostly from his rented house in Bengaluru or from his of fice premises of ITC while using an Acer laptop or a Nokia 6300 mobile phone.