FBI's counter terror probe led to Abu Salem's extradition

Mumbai: While an Interpol red corner notice (RCN) was issued against him in 1997, 1993 blasts’ case accused, gangster Abu Salem aka Abu Salem Abdul Qayoom Ansari was nabbed in Portugal in 2002, and extradited to India in November 2005 thanks to a counter terror probe by the US’s Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI), said police sources. Salem was nabbed in Lisbon, Portugal, on September 18, 2002, at a time when RCN was pending against him since 1997. This strengthened India’s claims for his extradition, which Portuguese authorities granted three years later.

In the post 9/11 attacks on the US, amid heightened counter-terror vigil by its enforcement agencies, it was a set of monetary transactions between entities/persons with unconfirmed identity located in the US and Portugal that came under the FBI scanner. The FBI began tracking the transactions on suspicions that they were “terror funds”, leading to the detention of Salem in Lisbon, where he was staying with his then girlfriend under an assumed identity, said an Intelligence Bureau (IB) source familiar with his extradition process. “The FBI found the monetary transactions, between persons staying in the US and Portugal, shadowy as they were suspected to be
terror funds,” said the source. “The FBI alerted Portuguese authorities who zeroed in on Salem after keeping him under surveillance for some time,” the source added.

Salem was brought to Mumbai in 2005, and put on trial in the blasts and eight other cases as per the Indo-Portuguese extradition agreement. His extradition, which was made on the basis of the International Convention for Suppression of Terrorist Bombings, of which India and Portugal are signatories, included a few key conditions — if extradited for trial in India, he would neither be conferred death penalty nor be subjected to imprisonment for a term beyond 25 years.