THE CURIOUS TALE OF MUMBAI TERROR
The Mumbai attacks need a thorough investigation
By Raveena Hansa | February 24, 2009
In all the confusion and horror generated by the ghastly terrorist attacks in Bombay, a dimension which has not received the attention it deserves is the circumstances surrounding the death of Anti-Terrorist Squad (ATS) chief Hemant Karkare and two of his colleagues, encounter specialist Vijay Salaskar and Additional Commissioner of Police Ashok Kamte. The major pattern of operations involved well-organised attacks on a few high-profile sites in Colaba – the Taj and Oberoi Hotels and Nariman House – while a parallel set of operations was centred on VT or CST station, Cama Hospital and the Metro cinema, in the middle of which is the police headquarters where Karkare worked. The latter is an area where foreigners are much less likely to be found.
Why is a Proper Investigation Crucial?
Hemant Karkare was engaged in unearthing a terror network with characteristics which had not been seen so far. The investigation started by tracing the motorcycle used to plant bombs in Malegaon in September 2008 to a Hindu Sadhvi, Pragyasingh Thakur; it later uncovered a cellphone conversation between her and Ramji, the man who planted the bombs, in which she asked why more people had not been killed. For the first time, the Indian state was conducting a thorough professional probe into a terror network centred on Hindu extremist organisations, this one with huge ramifications, some leading into military and bomb-making training camps and politicised elements in the army, others into organisations and political leaders affiliated to the BJP. One of the most potentially explosive discoveries was that a serving military intelligence officer, Lt.Col. Srikant Purohit, had procured 60 kg of RDX from government supplies for use in the terrorist attack on the Samjhauta Express (the India-Pakistan ''Understanding' train) in February 2007, in which 68 people were killed, the majority of them Pakistanis. Initially, militants of Lashkar-e-Taiba and other Islamist terror groups had been accused of carrying out the attack, but no evidence against them had been found.
The hostility generated by this investigation was enormous, with allegations that the suspects had been tortured and that Karkare was being used as a political tool, and demands that the ATS team should be changed. Chief Minister of Gujarat Narendra Modi and BJP Prime Ministerial candidate L.K.Advani accused him of being a 'desh drohi' or traitor, a charge that in India carries a death penalty. The Shiv Sena offered legal aid to those accused of the terrorist attack, and an editorial in its mouthpiece Saamna threatened that 'the people will take action' against the ATS officers involved in the Malegaon blast probe, adding that 'On such officers we spit, we spit'. In an interview shortly before he died, Karkare admitted he was hurt by the campaign against him. On November 26, just before the terrorist attack, the police in Pune received a call from an anonymous caller saying in Marathi that Karkare would be killed in a bomb blast within two or three days.
Just as attitudes to Karkare in society at large were polarised, with some admiring him as a hero – one Maulana went so far as to call him a 'massiha (messiah) of Muslims', an amazing tribute from a Muslim to a Hindu – while others hated him as a traitor worthy of death, attitudes within the police force too were polarised. For example, dismissed encounter specialist Sachin Vaze (who with three colleagues was charged with murder, criminal conspiracy, destruction of evidence and concealment of the dead body in the Khwaja Yunus case shortly before the terrorist attack) was a member of the Shiv Sena who was actively engaged in the campaign against Karkare and in support of the Malegaon blast accused.
Hard Evidence or Pulp Fiction?
Given this background, and reports that are riddled with inconsistencies, it is not surprising that many residents of Bombay are asking questions about the exact circumstances of the death of Hemant Karkare and his colleagues; when A.R.Antulay raised the question in parliament, he was merely giving voice to a small part of the doubts entertained by many others. The earliest reports, presumably relayed from the police via the media, said that Karkare had been killed at the Taj, and Salaskar and Kamte at Metro. If this was not true, why were we told this? And why was the story later changed? Was it because it conflicted with eye-witness accounts? In the early hours of the 27th, under the heading 'ATS Chief Hemant Karkare Killed: His Last Pics', IBNlive showed footage first of Karkare putting on a helmet and bullet-proof vest, then cut to a shootout at Metro, where an unconscious man who looks like Karkare and wearing the same light blue shirt and dark trousers (but without any blood on his shirt or the terrible wounds we saw on his face at his funeral) is being pulled into a car by two youths in saffron shirts. The commentary says that Karkare 'could well have fallen prey to just indiscriminate, random firing by the cops', and also reports that there were two vehicles, a Toyota Qualis and Honda City, from which the occupants were firing indiscriminately.
Later we were given two accounts of the killings where the venue was shifted to a deserted lane without cameras or eye-witnesses. The first account is by the lone terrorist captured alive, claiming to be A.A.Kasab from Faridkot in Pakistan and a member of the terrorist group Lashkar-e-Taiba. According to him, just two gumen, he and Ismail (also from Pakistan), first attacked VT station, where they sprayed bullets indiscriminately. (Around 58 people were killed there, over one-third of them Muslims, and many more might have been killed if the announcer, Mr Zende, had not risked his life to direct passengers to safety.) They then went to Cama, a government hospital for women and children used mainly by the poor. Initially, according to the police, Kasab claimed he and Ismail had killed Karkare, Salaskar and Kamte. Later, in his 'confession,' he claimed that while coming out of the hospital, he and Ismail saw a police vehicle passing and hid behind a bush; then another vehicle passed them and stopped some distance away. A police officer got out and started firing at them, hitting Kasab on the hand so that he dropped his AK47, but Ismail opened fire on the officers in the car until they stopped firing. There were three bodies in the vehicle, which Ismail removed, and then drove off in it with Kasab.
The other account is by police constable Arun Jadhav. According to him, Karkare, Salaskar, Kamte, a driver and four police constables including himself were driving down the alley from VT to the back entrance of Cama (barely a ten-minute drive) in their Toyota Qualis to check on injured police officer Sadanand Date when two gunmen emerged from behind trees by the left side of the road and sprayed the vehicle with bullets, killing all its inmates except Jadhav. They then dragged out the three officers, hijacked the vehicle, drove to Metro junction and then Mantralaya in South Bombay, abandoned it when a tyre burst, and grabbed another car. According to police accounts, they then drove to Girgaum, where Kasab was injured and arrested and his companion killed.
These accounts raise more questions than they answer. Kasab claimed that a band of ten terrorists landed and split up into twos, going to various destinations, he and his companion going to VT. He said they wanted to blow up the Taj, as in the attack on the Marriott in Islamabad; yet we are told that only 8kg of RDX were found at the Taj, and even that was not used; contrast this with 600kg of RDX and TNT used to blow up the Marriott: could they really have expected to blow up the Taj? Given that the rest of the operation was so systematic, why did they plant two bombs in taxis to go off in random locations, one in Dockyard Road and another in Vile Parle, 25 kilometres away? He said that the terrorists planned to use their hostages as a means of escape, yet there was no attempt at any time to do that; at other times, he also said they had been instructed to fight to the death. He says he is a labourer from Faridkot near Multan and only studied up to Class IV, but it is reported that he speaks fluent English. Several people have pointed out that the pictures of him in VT show him wearing a saffron wrist-band, a Hindu custom, and police later revealed that he could not recite a single verse from the Koran, which any child growing up in a Muslim family would have been able to do. Indeed, a thoughtful article on the soc.culture.jewish group argued that the terrorists were not Muslims but mercenaries, given their appearance and behaviour (especially their reported consumption of alcohol and drugs), pointing out that they did not need to disguise themselves, since Muslims who look like Muslims are plentiful in Bombay, and would not attract undue attention.
During his interrogation, Kasab said that he and eight of the operatives had done a reconaissance trip to Bombay a few months back, pretending to be students and renting a room at Colaba market, which is close to Nariman House. It is extremely hard for Pakistani nationals to get Indian visas, and they are kept under close surveillance by the police; it is also most unlikely that the Indian immigration authorities would be fooled by forged passports of another country. In that case, the Indian immigration authorities would have visa applications of nine of the terrorists including Kasab, and could match the photographs in them to those of the terrorists: has this been done? Later, Kasab changed his story and said that the team who carried out reconnaissance was different from the team who had carried out the attacks.
The events in VT and Cama and the back lane also put a question mark over his story. According to witnesses, two gunmen started firing at the mainline terminus in VT at 21.55 on Wednesday night, but at precisely the same time, according to CCTV footage, two gunmen began an assault on the suburban terminus. If the first account is true, there were four gunmen at the station: where did the other two come from, and where did they go? We are shown video footage, claiming to be CCTV but without the timeline of normal CCTV footage, of Kasab and Ismail wandering around the parking lot near the mainline terminus. This surely cannot be before the shootout, since the station is completely deserted; and after the shootout, Kasab and Ismail are supposed to have escaped via the footbridge from Platform 1 of the suburban station on the other side of VT: this, again, suggests there were four gunmen. Even if Kasab and Ismail had been shown photographs of Karkare, Salaskar and Kamte before they embarked on their trip, how could they possibly have identified the police officers in a dark alley in the dead of night according to Kasab's first story? According to his later confession, a police officer got out of the vehicle and started firing first, injuring him; how, then, did Ismail manage to kill the rest by himself?
Witnesses in Cama hospital say the terrorists spoke fluent Marathi, and this report in two Marathi papers (Maharashtra Times and Navakaal of 28 /12/ 2008) has been confirmed. The gunmen killed two guards in uniform, spared a third, who was in civilian dress and begged for his life saying he was the husband of a patient, demanded water from an employee in the staff quarters and then killed him. They then appear to have made a beeline for the 6th floor (which was empty) and the terrace, taking with them the liftman, Tikhe. 15-30 minutes later, six to eight policemen arrived, and another employee took them up to the 6th floor. The policemen threw a piece of steel up to the terrace, whereupon Tikhe came running down and told them there were two terrorists on the terrace. A fierce gun-battle ensued for 30 to 45 minutes, in which ACP Sadanand Date was injured. Panic-stricken patients and staff in the maternity ward on the 5th floor barricaded the door; nurses instructed the women to breast-feed their babies to keep them quiet, and one woman, who was in the middle of labour, was told to hold back the birth; but they were not invaded. Eventually the gunmen appear to have escaped, it is not clear how. If they were Kasab and Ismail, then these two must have been fluent Marathi speakers. And why would they have taken up positions on the terrace? Was it because it overlooks the lane in which Karkare, Salaskar and Kamte were later supposedly killed?
The other account is equally dubious. In his first account, Jadhav said Karkare was in the second row of the Qualis, while in the second he was supposed to be in the front row with Kamte. In the second account, Salaskar was initially sitting behind the driver, but then asked the driver to slow down and got behind the wheel himself: is it plausible that an experienced encounter specialist would deliberately make himself into a sitting duck like this when they were in hot pursuit of terrorists? In the first account they were supposed to be going to check up on their injured colleague Sadanand Date, but in the second were supposed to be looking for a red car in which they had been told the gunmen were travelling. If the report about the red car was a decoy to lure them into an ambush, it is important to know who told them that the terrorists were in a red car. If the gunmen were firing from the left side, as Jadhav claimed, how was Karkare hit three times in the chest while Jadhav himself got two bullets in his right arm? In fact, the only vegetation in that part of the lane is on the right side, and is pinned to the wall by chest-high wire netting; it would be necessary to climb over the netting to hide behind it, and climb over again to come out: impossible under the circumstances. Witnesses say only two bodies were found at the spot next morning: what happened to the third officer? Who were the three constables killed?
How did two terrorists manage to kill six police personnel, including Karkare and Kamte who he said were armed with AK47s and Salaskar, an encounter specialist, when one terrorist was later captured and the other killed by policemen armed only with two rifles and lathis? Assistant Police Inspector Ombale was killed in that encounter, but his colleagues survived. A DNA report on 2 December said that sub-inspector Durgude, who had been posted in front of St Xavier's College, between Cama Hospital and the exit point of the back lane onto Mahapalika Road, saw two young men whom he took to be students and called out to warn them that there was firing at Cama. When they ignored him, he approached them, upon which one of them turned an AK47 on him and killed him. If Kasab and Ismail were there, who was firing inside Cama? Again, it is evident that at least four terrorists, and possibly more, were involved in this operation.
There was also an intriguing report in DNA on 28 November saying that Anand Raorane, a resident of a building opposite Nariman House, heard sounds of celebration from the terrorists there when the news of Karkare getting killed was flashed on TV: isn't that strange? The same report quoted a resident of Nariman House and a local shopkeeper who said that the terrorists had purchased large quantities of food and liquor before the attack, suggesting that more than two of them were planning to occupy the place for a long time. Eye-witnesses in St Xavier's saw a man shot and lying on the pavement in front of the college around 12.30 a.m., while about three gunmen stood over him: who was that? Various reports said that two to eight terrorists were captured alive. Now there is only one in police custody: what happened to the other(s)?
A careful scrutiny of all the reports available so far suggests, to this writer anyway, that the killing of Karkare was a premeditated act executed by his self-proclaimed enemies, some of whom had prior intelligence of the attack on the hotels and planned their own attack to coincide with it. The operation in Cama, in particular, seems to have had the sole objective of luring Karkare into the lane where he was later reportedly killed. A.R.Antulay's demand for a probe into the killing was widely supported, even though the same parties who were earlier vilifying and threatening Karkare responded by baying for his blood. P.Chidambaram's clarification that it was by chance that Karkare, Salaskar and Kamte happened to be travelling in the same vehicle does not explain any of the other anomalies: Why did the terrorists go into Cama? If they were intending to slaughter people ruthlessly as they did in VT, why did they desist – did they have a sudden crisis of conscience? If they intended to create a hostage crisis, why did they go to the 6th floor and terrace, where there were no patients or staff? On the other hand, if they were looking for a getaway vehicle, wouldn't they have been more likely to find it on the road than on the terrace of Cama? How did these Pakistanis learn to speak Marathi so fluently? And are we really expected to believe that they could defy the laws of nature by being in two places at the same time, engaged in a shootout at Cama while at the same time gunning down sub-inspector Durgude outside St Xavier's?
The Objective: Shutting Down Terrorist Networks
These are just a few of the numerous questions being asked by vigilant Bombayites who find themselves thoroughly dissatisfied with the information that has been doled out. These are citizens who understand that their security depends on identifying Islamist terrorist networks in Pakistan and shutting them down, but feel it is equally important to their security to identify and shut down Hindutva terrorist networks in India, which have been responsible for the majority of terrorist attacks in Maharashtra, and possibly the whole country, in the past five years. Why are they so cynical about the possibility of a genuine professional investigation? The answer is that we have too much bitter experience of investigations in which innocent people (usually Muslims) are rounded up, tortured and even killed, while the real culprits are allowed to go free. Interpol chief Robert Noble's amazing revelation on December 23 that India had not shared any information about the terrorists with it, despite its offer to use Interpol's extensive resources to assist in the investigation, can only fuel the suspicion that the information dished out by the police to the public via the media is not of a quality that would be acceptable to a truly professional police agency. Karkare broke with this dismal record, but now he is dead. When a person who has been vilified, slandered and threatened with death is killed in suspicious circumstances, it is imperative that a proper investigation should be carried out soon, before too much evidence can be manufactured and/or destroyed. If Kasab aka Iman disappears or is assassinated like Lee Harvey Oswald, or is executed, that could only be seen as evidence of a cover-up.
The government and people of Pakistan have as much interest as the government and people of India in eliminating the terror networks that have killed President Asif Ali Zardari's wife Benazir Bhutto and thousands of others in both Pakistan and India. The terrorists, on the other hand, be they Islamist or Hindutva, have a common interest in destroying secularism, democracy and peace within and between the two countries. That is their precise agenda. Pakistani politicians had offered a joint investigation into the terrorist attacks, a far more sensible suggestion than belligerent statements by some Indians accusing Pakistan of harbouring terrorists who are killing Indians, which led us to the brink of war. It should be obvious that a military conflict between India and Pakistan, advocated by the Shiv Sena, would be disastrous for both countries
economically, while a nuclear war, which might ensue if extremist forces captured power in both countries, would have unthinkable consequences. If the Indo-Pakistan peace process is halted, as L.K.Advani advocates, the terrorists would have won.
Indeed, without a joint investigation, the terrorist networks behind this outrage can never be uncovered: how else could the names and addresses in Pakistan revealed by Kasab be followed up to the satisfaction of all parties? Interpol could act as a coordinating agency, but would not be able to follow up information about the terrorists unless it is provided by the Indian authorities. The Indian government owes it to the memory of Karkare, Salaskar and Kamte, who died fighting terrorism of all hues, to establish a credible account of exactly where, when and how they were killed, and identify their killers; unlike the well-known female TV anchor and others who berated Antulay for 'helping Pakistan,' we do not have to agree that one has to be a moron in order to be a good Indian! The government also owes it to us, the public, who are the prime targets of all terrorist attacks, to carry out a credible investigation which identifies and puts behind bars all the mass murderers involved in this and other attacks.
Showing posts with label Mumbai attacks. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Mumbai attacks. Show all posts
NYT : India Presses Pakistan on Terrorism but Finds Its Own Options Limited
Friday, December 12, 2008
India Presses Pakistan on Terrorism but Finds Its Own Options Limited
By SOMINI SENGUPTA | December 11, 2008
NEW DELHI — Even as Indian officials on Thursday lambasted Pakistan as the “epicenter” of terrorism and dismissed its crackdown on extremist groups as inadequate in the wake of last month’s attacks in Mumbai, they all but ruled out the prospect of a military confrontation.
Rather, Foreign Minister Pranab Mukherjee told members of Parliament that it would take time for India to turn off the tap of support for militant groups operating across the border, and that war was “no solution.”
“We shall have to patiently confront it,” he said. “We have no intention to be provoked.”
His words signaled India’s delicate and somewhat circumscribed options. If it were to carry out even limited military strikes against Pakistan, it would be likely to lose the support of its allies, namely the United States, which fears that Pakistan would then divert troops from its western border with Afghanistan to its eastern one with India.
Second, India confronts a weak civilian government in Pakistan, which, as Indian officials have long acknowledged privately, has little muscle to counter the powerful military and spy agency.
India’s options include suspending peace talks and what military analysts call limited punitive strikes on terrorist training camps.
Mr. Mukherjee said Thursday that he had no “quarrel” with the administration of President Asif Ali Zardari in Pakistan but pressed him to do more to dismantle support for militants. Initially after the Mumbai attacks, Mr. Zardari had described the suspects as “nonstate actors” over whom the Pakistani government had no control. On Thursday, that statement met with a stinging retort from Mr. Mukherjee.
“Are they nonstate actors coming from heaven, or are they coming from a different planet?” Mr. Mukherjee asked. “Nonstate actors are operating from a particular country. What we are most respectfully submitting, suggesting to the government of Pakistan: Please act. Mere expression of intention is not adequate.”
India’s coalition government, led by the Congress Party, is keenly aware of a wave of public outrage over the administration’s failure to heed intelligence warnings or stop the attackers more quickly. On Thursday, it unveiled an overhaul of the national security system. The government said it would set up a national investigative agency to coordinate with various state and local law enforcement agencies, increase coastal security and modernize the police forces.
“Given the nature of the threat, we can’t go back to business as usual,” Home Minister Palaniappan Chidambaram said in a speech to Parliament. He said it would require “hard decisions to prepare the country and people to face the challenge of terrorism.”
The gunmen who carried out the three-day siege of Mumbai, India’s financial capital, killed 171 people. Nine of the gunmen were killed and a 10th was arrested. The Mumbai police said all of the attackers were Pakistani citizens who traveled across the Arabian Sea to Mumbai, formerly Bombay. They are believed to have belonged to a Pakistan-based group called Lashkar-e-Taiba, which is officially banned in Pakistan.
This week, in response to appeals by India and the United States, the United Nations Security Council declared that a charity called Jamaat-ud-Dawa was a front for Lashkar-e-Taiba and subject to United Nations sanctions, including the freezing of its assets and a travel ban on four of its leaders. Those leaders include Hafiz Muhammed Saeed, the head of the charity, and Zaki ur-Rehman Lakhvi, who India said had planned the Mumbai attacks and whose arrest the Pakistani government announced last Sunday.
Indian officials dismissed the arrests as inadequate. They pointed out that Pakistan had placed many of the same men under house arrest after the attacks on the Indian Parliament in December 2001, which India said was the work of Pakistan-based groups, but quietly released them later.
“We have noted the reported steps taken by Pakistan, but clearly much more needs to be done,” India’s prime minister, Manmohan Singh, told Parliament on Thursday evening. He called for the dismantling of “the infrastructure of terrorism” across the border and then issued a warning to India’s allies abroad. “The political will of the international community,” he said, “must be translated into concrete and sustained action on the ground.”
India’s wait-and-watch approach seems to be primarily directed at the United States, political analysts here say, and particularly at President-elect Barack Obama, who India hopes will exert a stronger hand against Pakistan. “India will have to wait until the logic of this is going to work out and the United States will have to act,” said K. Subrahmanyam, a strategic affairs analyst in New Delhi. “What we are waiting for is when Obama takes over, there will be a showdown between Pakistan and the United States, unless Pakistan is prepared to mend its ways.”
The United States has sought to temper India’s reaction and has pushed Pakistan to do more. The deputy secretary of state, John D. Negroponte, was in Islamabad, Pakistan’s capital, on Thursday, a week after visits by Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice and Adm. Mike Mullen, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff.
“There is a lot of pressure to do something meaningful and see Pakistan take long-term irreversible steps, but the Indian government has up to this point been very cautious,” said Xenia Dormandy, a former Bush administration official who now runs the Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs at the Kennedy School of Government at Harvard.
If Pakistan does not go further, she added, India would be likely to act with a heavier hand. “Whether it is as forward leaning as bombing camps in Jammu and Kashmir, I don’t know,” she said. “I think you will see India take some stronger steps in the next two, three weeks.”
Adding to the difficulty of dealing with Pakistan, Indian and foreign analysts point out, is that the civilian government itself confronts a powerful army and the Directorate for Inter-Services Intelligence, the spy agency. Indeed, immediately after the Mumbai attacks, Pakistan’s civilian administration announced that it would send its spy chief to India; within hours, that offer was withdrawn.
“Who do you deal with, who do you talk to?” a Western diplomat in India said. “If you get the government to do something about it and if the real organization is the ISI — and I say if — then any action by the government is going to be of limited use, really. It is a problem. It is one everybody is thinking about.”
By SOMINI SENGUPTA | December 11, 2008
NEW DELHI — Even as Indian officials on Thursday lambasted Pakistan as the “epicenter” of terrorism and dismissed its crackdown on extremist groups as inadequate in the wake of last month’s attacks in Mumbai, they all but ruled out the prospect of a military confrontation.
Rather, Foreign Minister Pranab Mukherjee told members of Parliament that it would take time for India to turn off the tap of support for militant groups operating across the border, and that war was “no solution.”
“We shall have to patiently confront it,” he said. “We have no intention to be provoked.”
His words signaled India’s delicate and somewhat circumscribed options. If it were to carry out even limited military strikes against Pakistan, it would be likely to lose the support of its allies, namely the United States, which fears that Pakistan would then divert troops from its western border with Afghanistan to its eastern one with India.
Second, India confronts a weak civilian government in Pakistan, which, as Indian officials have long acknowledged privately, has little muscle to counter the powerful military and spy agency.
India’s options include suspending peace talks and what military analysts call limited punitive strikes on terrorist training camps.
Mr. Mukherjee said Thursday that he had no “quarrel” with the administration of President Asif Ali Zardari in Pakistan but pressed him to do more to dismantle support for militants. Initially after the Mumbai attacks, Mr. Zardari had described the suspects as “nonstate actors” over whom the Pakistani government had no control. On Thursday, that statement met with a stinging retort from Mr. Mukherjee.
“Are they nonstate actors coming from heaven, or are they coming from a different planet?” Mr. Mukherjee asked. “Nonstate actors are operating from a particular country. What we are most respectfully submitting, suggesting to the government of Pakistan: Please act. Mere expression of intention is not adequate.”
India’s coalition government, led by the Congress Party, is keenly aware of a wave of public outrage over the administration’s failure to heed intelligence warnings or stop the attackers more quickly. On Thursday, it unveiled an overhaul of the national security system. The government said it would set up a national investigative agency to coordinate with various state and local law enforcement agencies, increase coastal security and modernize the police forces.
“Given the nature of the threat, we can’t go back to business as usual,” Home Minister Palaniappan Chidambaram said in a speech to Parliament. He said it would require “hard decisions to prepare the country and people to face the challenge of terrorism.”
The gunmen who carried out the three-day siege of Mumbai, India’s financial capital, killed 171 people. Nine of the gunmen were killed and a 10th was arrested. The Mumbai police said all of the attackers were Pakistani citizens who traveled across the Arabian Sea to Mumbai, formerly Bombay. They are believed to have belonged to a Pakistan-based group called Lashkar-e-Taiba, which is officially banned in Pakistan.
This week, in response to appeals by India and the United States, the United Nations Security Council declared that a charity called Jamaat-ud-Dawa was a front for Lashkar-e-Taiba and subject to United Nations sanctions, including the freezing of its assets and a travel ban on four of its leaders. Those leaders include Hafiz Muhammed Saeed, the head of the charity, and Zaki ur-Rehman Lakhvi, who India said had planned the Mumbai attacks and whose arrest the Pakistani government announced last Sunday.
Indian officials dismissed the arrests as inadequate. They pointed out that Pakistan had placed many of the same men under house arrest after the attacks on the Indian Parliament in December 2001, which India said was the work of Pakistan-based groups, but quietly released them later.
“We have noted the reported steps taken by Pakistan, but clearly much more needs to be done,” India’s prime minister, Manmohan Singh, told Parliament on Thursday evening. He called for the dismantling of “the infrastructure of terrorism” across the border and then issued a warning to India’s allies abroad. “The political will of the international community,” he said, “must be translated into concrete and sustained action on the ground.”
India’s wait-and-watch approach seems to be primarily directed at the United States, political analysts here say, and particularly at President-elect Barack Obama, who India hopes will exert a stronger hand against Pakistan. “India will have to wait until the logic of this is going to work out and the United States will have to act,” said K. Subrahmanyam, a strategic affairs analyst in New Delhi. “What we are waiting for is when Obama takes over, there will be a showdown between Pakistan and the United States, unless Pakistan is prepared to mend its ways.”
The United States has sought to temper India’s reaction and has pushed Pakistan to do more. The deputy secretary of state, John D. Negroponte, was in Islamabad, Pakistan’s capital, on Thursday, a week after visits by Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice and Adm. Mike Mullen, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff.
“There is a lot of pressure to do something meaningful and see Pakistan take long-term irreversible steps, but the Indian government has up to this point been very cautious,” said Xenia Dormandy, a former Bush administration official who now runs the Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs at the Kennedy School of Government at Harvard.
If Pakistan does not go further, she added, India would be likely to act with a heavier hand. “Whether it is as forward leaning as bombing camps in Jammu and Kashmir, I don’t know,” she said. “I think you will see India take some stronger steps in the next two, three weeks.”
Adding to the difficulty of dealing with Pakistan, Indian and foreign analysts point out, is that the civilian government itself confronts a powerful army and the Directorate for Inter-Services Intelligence, the spy agency. Indeed, immediately after the Mumbai attacks, Pakistan’s civilian administration announced that it would send its spy chief to India; within hours, that offer was withdrawn.
“Who do you deal with, who do you talk to?” a Western diplomat in India said. “If you get the government to do something about it and if the real organization is the ISI — and I say if — then any action by the government is going to be of limited use, really. It is a problem. It is one everybody is thinking about.”
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by Winter Patriot
on Friday, December 12, 2008
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Counterpunch : By Way of Pakistan: From Baghdad to Mumbai
Wednesday, December 03, 2008
By Way of Pakistan: From Baghdad to Mumbai
By PATRICK COCKBURN | December 1, 2008
I used to look out from the balcony of The Independent’s first floor room in the al-Hamra hotel in Baghdad thinking that one day the hotel would attacked and wondering from which direction the attack would come. The general consensus among the correspondents and security men in the Hamra, which boasted 65 armed guards, was that the weak point in our defences was the single blast wall about 30 yards from the back of the hotel. On the other side of it was a public car park which anybody could enter.
The consensus view turned out to be all too correct. I was out of the hotel on November 18, 2005, when two vehicles driven by suicide bombers entered the car park. The first rammed the concrete wall and detonated his explosives, the idea being that the blast would open a breach enabling the second vehicle, packed with 1,000 kilos of explosives to reach the hotel. It almost worked, but the crater created by the first bomb was so deep that the second bomber could not get through. He blew himself up just short of his target, killing half a dozen people and badly damaging this part of the hotel which has never been reoccupied.
We never knew the identity of the two men who had died trying to kill us but at that time most of the suicide bombers were Saudis, Yemenis, Egyptians and Libyans. I had been emphasizing for several years that the Iraqi insurgency against the US occupation was essentially home grown. Aside from the suicide bombers themselves, almost all the guerrilla fighters who were launching attacks on American troops and fledgling Iraqi government forces were Iraqi. Most of them had been trained militarily in Saddam Hussein’s army or security forces.
At that time the White House and the Pentagon were still ludicrously pretending that the Sunni Arab uprising which spread so fast after the summer of 2003 was a mixture of foreign fighters and ‘remnants’ or ‘dead enders’ of the old regime. It was easy enough for me and other correspondents to pour scorn on this idea. Iraq was full of weapons and every household owned one. No foreign suppliers were needed. Whenever there was a successful ambush of US troops in a Sunni area local people would dance with joy amidst the blazing vehicles.
We were essentially right about the rebellion being home grown, but perhaps we should have emphasized more the significance of foreign support for the rebels. The American neo-cons were openly boasting that after overthrowing Saddam the Iranian and Syrian regimes were next on the US list. Not surprisingly both governments had an incentive to make sure US rule in Iraq never stabilized. Nor were they alone. All the conservative Sunni Arab regimes of the Middle East were alarmed by an American land army in Iraq in support of a Shia-Kurdish government. The anti-American guerrillas found they had many friends.
In the immediate aftermath of the murderous attacks in Mumbai much of the analysis has a familiar ring, but now it is the west which is downplaying foreign involvement. Indian allegations about “external linkages” of the terrorists is wearily reported as an unfortunate resumption of Pakistani-Indian finger pointing. Television and newspaper commentary on terrorist outrages is frequently provided by self-appointed ‘terrorist experts’ whose credentials remain mysterious. These supposed experts now emphasise the alienation of Indian Muslims and suggesting that the origin of the terrorist assault on Mumbai is home grown, the fruit of the radicalization of Indian Muslims by systematic discrimination against them by the Indian state.
Exactly who was behind the bloody mayhem in Mumbai is still unclear. The Hindu newspaper was yesterday reporting that three of the suspects captured by the police were members of Lashkar-i-Taiba (the Army of the Pious), which has several thousand members in Pakistani-controlled Kashmir, and the gunmen had arrived in Mumbai by ship from Karachi in Pakistan. The group is one of the three largest fighting against India in Kashmir.
The origins and motives of the men who slaughtered so many people in Mumbai will emerge in the coming days. But already the butchery should be underlining one of the greatest of the many failings of the Bush administration post 9/11. Pakistan was always the real base for al-Qa’ida. It was the Pakistani ISI military intelligence which fostered and partly directed the Taliban before 2001 and revived it afterwards. It is Pakistan which has sustained the Islamic Jihadi fighters in Kashmir where half the Indian army is tied down. Yet the Bush administration in its folly allied itself to General Pervez Musharaf and the Pakistani army post 9/11 ensuring that Jihadi groups always had a base.
It is self-defeating hypocrisy for the west to lecture the Indian government now about not over-reacting and not automatically blaming the Pakistani government or some part of its security apparatus for Mumbai. The way in which the Pakistani military has allowed Kashmiri and Pakistani militants free range in Pakistan created the milieu from which the attacks this week came. It may be that the monster the ISI created is no long under its control, but it is ultimately responsible for what has happened.
The real political background to Mumbai is succinctly summed up by Ahmed Rashid in his excellent book ‘Descent into Chaos: How the war against Islamic extremism is being lost in Pakistan, Afghanistan and Central Asia.’ In Pakistan, he writes, ‘a nuclear-armed military and an intelligence service that have sponsored Islamic extremism as an intrinsic part of their foreign policy for nearly four decades have found it extremely difficult to give up their self-destructive and double-dealing policies.’ Unless Barack Obama can persuade them to do so he will achieve no more as president than Mr Bush.
By PATRICK COCKBURN | December 1, 2008
I used to look out from the balcony of The Independent’s first floor room in the al-Hamra hotel in Baghdad thinking that one day the hotel would attacked and wondering from which direction the attack would come. The general consensus among the correspondents and security men in the Hamra, which boasted 65 armed guards, was that the weak point in our defences was the single blast wall about 30 yards from the back of the hotel. On the other side of it was a public car park which anybody could enter.
The consensus view turned out to be all too correct. I was out of the hotel on November 18, 2005, when two vehicles driven by suicide bombers entered the car park. The first rammed the concrete wall and detonated his explosives, the idea being that the blast would open a breach enabling the second vehicle, packed with 1,000 kilos of explosives to reach the hotel. It almost worked, but the crater created by the first bomb was so deep that the second bomber could not get through. He blew himself up just short of his target, killing half a dozen people and badly damaging this part of the hotel which has never been reoccupied.
We never knew the identity of the two men who had died trying to kill us but at that time most of the suicide bombers were Saudis, Yemenis, Egyptians and Libyans. I had been emphasizing for several years that the Iraqi insurgency against the US occupation was essentially home grown. Aside from the suicide bombers themselves, almost all the guerrilla fighters who were launching attacks on American troops and fledgling Iraqi government forces were Iraqi. Most of them had been trained militarily in Saddam Hussein’s army or security forces.
At that time the White House and the Pentagon were still ludicrously pretending that the Sunni Arab uprising which spread so fast after the summer of 2003 was a mixture of foreign fighters and ‘remnants’ or ‘dead enders’ of the old regime. It was easy enough for me and other correspondents to pour scorn on this idea. Iraq was full of weapons and every household owned one. No foreign suppliers were needed. Whenever there was a successful ambush of US troops in a Sunni area local people would dance with joy amidst the blazing vehicles.
We were essentially right about the rebellion being home grown, but perhaps we should have emphasized more the significance of foreign support for the rebels. The American neo-cons were openly boasting that after overthrowing Saddam the Iranian and Syrian regimes were next on the US list. Not surprisingly both governments had an incentive to make sure US rule in Iraq never stabilized. Nor were they alone. All the conservative Sunni Arab regimes of the Middle East were alarmed by an American land army in Iraq in support of a Shia-Kurdish government. The anti-American guerrillas found they had many friends.
In the immediate aftermath of the murderous attacks in Mumbai much of the analysis has a familiar ring, but now it is the west which is downplaying foreign involvement. Indian allegations about “external linkages” of the terrorists is wearily reported as an unfortunate resumption of Pakistani-Indian finger pointing. Television and newspaper commentary on terrorist outrages is frequently provided by self-appointed ‘terrorist experts’ whose credentials remain mysterious. These supposed experts now emphasise the alienation of Indian Muslims and suggesting that the origin of the terrorist assault on Mumbai is home grown, the fruit of the radicalization of Indian Muslims by systematic discrimination against them by the Indian state.
Exactly who was behind the bloody mayhem in Mumbai is still unclear. The Hindu newspaper was yesterday reporting that three of the suspects captured by the police were members of Lashkar-i-Taiba (the Army of the Pious), which has several thousand members in Pakistani-controlled Kashmir, and the gunmen had arrived in Mumbai by ship from Karachi in Pakistan. The group is one of the three largest fighting against India in Kashmir.
The origins and motives of the men who slaughtered so many people in Mumbai will emerge in the coming days. But already the butchery should be underlining one of the greatest of the many failings of the Bush administration post 9/11. Pakistan was always the real base for al-Qa’ida. It was the Pakistani ISI military intelligence which fostered and partly directed the Taliban before 2001 and revived it afterwards. It is Pakistan which has sustained the Islamic Jihadi fighters in Kashmir where half the Indian army is tied down. Yet the Bush administration in its folly allied itself to General Pervez Musharaf and the Pakistani army post 9/11 ensuring that Jihadi groups always had a base.
It is self-defeating hypocrisy for the west to lecture the Indian government now about not over-reacting and not automatically blaming the Pakistani government or some part of its security apparatus for Mumbai. The way in which the Pakistani military has allowed Kashmiri and Pakistani militants free range in Pakistan created the milieu from which the attacks this week came. It may be that the monster the ISI created is no long under its control, but it is ultimately responsible for what has happened.
The real political background to Mumbai is succinctly summed up by Ahmed Rashid in his excellent book ‘Descent into Chaos: How the war against Islamic extremism is being lost in Pakistan, Afghanistan and Central Asia.’ In Pakistan, he writes, ‘a nuclear-armed military and an intelligence service that have sponsored Islamic extremism as an intrinsic part of their foreign policy for nearly four decades have found it extremely difficult to give up their self-destructive and double-dealing policies.’ Unless Barack Obama can persuade them to do so he will achieve no more as president than Mr Bush.
Filed under
Iraq,
Mumbai attacks,
Pakistan,
Patrick Cockburn
by Winter Patriot
on Wednesday, December 03, 2008
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BNP : Mumbai Terrorists Told to “Kill Whites, Especially British and Americans”
Tuesday, December 02, 2008
Mumbai Terrorists Told to “Kill Whites, Especially British and Americans”
by BNP News | November 30, 2008
The sole surviving terrorist of the Mumbai attacks has told interrogators that he was instructed to “kill whites, especially British and American tourists” before taking hostages.
Azam Amir Kasab, 21, from Pakistan, said the attacks were planned six months ago and were intended to kill 5,000 people. Surviving the massacre after trying to flee, the Pakistani-born terrorist has made a full confession to police.
He revealed that the ten terrorists, who were highly trained in marine assault and crept into the city by boat, had planned to blow up the Taj Mahal Palace hotel after first executing British and American tourists and then taking hostages.
He described how its mastermind briefed the group to “target whites, preferably Americans and British.”
Kasab described how he and an accomplice sprayed machine-gun fire around a busy railway station, killing dozens of people, before intending to move to the exclusive district of Malabar Hill, where they planned to “take VIPs hostage.”
Four men went to the Taj hotel, two to the Jewish centre of Nariman House, Kasab and another man set off by taxi towards the railway station, and two headed for the Leopold restaurant.
While his colleagues were executing hostages at the Taj, Kasab and Ismail first opened fire with their assault rifles at around 10.20pm, killing dozens of people standing at Chhatrapati Shivaji railway station.
Then they hijacked a police 4×4, killing the two officers inside. Kasab told investigators they continued their killing spree by attacking a petrol station and blowing up a taxi before being stopped.
“I have done right,” he told investigators. “I have no regrets.”
At least 22 foreigners are known to have died, including victims from Germany, Japan, Canada, Australia, Italy, Singapore, Thailand and France. It is expected that the final death toll will be over 300.
Claims that up to seven of the terrorists could have been British men of Pakistani origin, who had connections to West Yorkshire, were being widely discounted.
A top Indian official, Maharashtra state chief minister Vilasrao Deshmukh, said that there was “no authentic information” to suggest that any British citizens were involved, contradicting an earlier claim he had made.
An earlier news report said that one of the terrorists had been working at the Taj hotel as a kitchen porter for up to eight months before the attacks and had produced a British passport during his job interview. This was strongly denied by the hotel management.
* A banned Islamic terrorist group funded with cash raised in British mosques is believed to be behind the Mumbai attacks.
Kashmiri separatists Lashkar-e-Taiba, ‘The Army of the Righteous’, which has strong links to Al Qaeda, is accused of previous terrorist outrages in India.
Intercepted telephone and radio communications before and during the latest attacks apparently suggest a link. Indian officials say at least one of the gunmen captured after the attacks is part of a Lashkar network.
Lashkar-e-Taiba has been blamed for violence throughout India, including the 2001 attack on the Indian Parliament building in New Delhi and a strike at an amusement park in Hyderabad in 2007. It is accused of being behind a series of train bombings in Mumbai in 2006, which claimed almost 200 lives.
In 2006, a Coventry-based Muslim was sentenced to nine years in jail for conspiring to provide funds for its terrorist activities.
*It has also been reported that British Intelligence (the same ones who blame whites for Islamic extremism) bosses are set to launch a probe into suspected links between Birmingham-born militant Rashid Rauf and the Mumbai terror attack.
Security forces in India will examine connections between two Islamist Kashmiri groups thought to be behind the Mumbai assault, which has claimed almost 200 lives, and Rauf, who was known to be a member of both terror groups.
Rauf, 27, from Ward End, Birmingham — an Al Qaeda suspect said to be the “key player” behind the alleged liquid bomb plot to blow up transatlantic airliners — was killed in a missile strike last Saturday in North Western Pakistan by an unmanned US drone.
Sources have now revealed that he was planning a major attack at the time of his death, and that the Mumbai murders show all the hallmarks of one of Rauf’s “terror spectacular” plots.
The Indian Mujahidin, which carried out a blast in Delhi in September and warned that they would strike next in Mumbai, is understood to have been behind this week’s terror outrage.
The group is made up of several different militant organisations, the most dangerous of which are the Pakistani-based Kashmiri “freedom” movements Lashkar-e-Toiba (LET) and Jaish-e-Mohammed (JEM). Rauf was known to have strong links to both organisations.
He married a relative of JEM’s founder and worked with LET to train British jihadis who travelled to Pakistan. London 7/7 bombers Shehzad Tanweer and Mohammed Siddique Khan both studied at an LET madrassa near Lahore in 2004.
by BNP News | November 30, 2008
The sole surviving terrorist of the Mumbai attacks has told interrogators that he was instructed to “kill whites, especially British and American tourists” before taking hostages.
Azam Amir Kasab, 21, from Pakistan, said the attacks were planned six months ago and were intended to kill 5,000 people. Surviving the massacre after trying to flee, the Pakistani-born terrorist has made a full confession to police.
He revealed that the ten terrorists, who were highly trained in marine assault and crept into the city by boat, had planned to blow up the Taj Mahal Palace hotel after first executing British and American tourists and then taking hostages.
He described how its mastermind briefed the group to “target whites, preferably Americans and British.”
Kasab described how he and an accomplice sprayed machine-gun fire around a busy railway station, killing dozens of people, before intending to move to the exclusive district of Malabar Hill, where they planned to “take VIPs hostage.”
Four men went to the Taj hotel, two to the Jewish centre of Nariman House, Kasab and another man set off by taxi towards the railway station, and two headed for the Leopold restaurant.
While his colleagues were executing hostages at the Taj, Kasab and Ismail first opened fire with their assault rifles at around 10.20pm, killing dozens of people standing at Chhatrapati Shivaji railway station.
Then they hijacked a police 4×4, killing the two officers inside. Kasab told investigators they continued their killing spree by attacking a petrol station and blowing up a taxi before being stopped.
“I have done right,” he told investigators. “I have no regrets.”
At least 22 foreigners are known to have died, including victims from Germany, Japan, Canada, Australia, Italy, Singapore, Thailand and France. It is expected that the final death toll will be over 300.
Claims that up to seven of the terrorists could have been British men of Pakistani origin, who had connections to West Yorkshire, were being widely discounted.
A top Indian official, Maharashtra state chief minister Vilasrao Deshmukh, said that there was “no authentic information” to suggest that any British citizens were involved, contradicting an earlier claim he had made.
An earlier news report said that one of the terrorists had been working at the Taj hotel as a kitchen porter for up to eight months before the attacks and had produced a British passport during his job interview. This was strongly denied by the hotel management.
* A banned Islamic terrorist group funded with cash raised in British mosques is believed to be behind the Mumbai attacks.
Kashmiri separatists Lashkar-e-Taiba, ‘The Army of the Righteous’, which has strong links to Al Qaeda, is accused of previous terrorist outrages in India.
Intercepted telephone and radio communications before and during the latest attacks apparently suggest a link. Indian officials say at least one of the gunmen captured after the attacks is part of a Lashkar network.
Lashkar-e-Taiba has been blamed for violence throughout India, including the 2001 attack on the Indian Parliament building in New Delhi and a strike at an amusement park in Hyderabad in 2007. It is accused of being behind a series of train bombings in Mumbai in 2006, which claimed almost 200 lives.
In 2006, a Coventry-based Muslim was sentenced to nine years in jail for conspiring to provide funds for its terrorist activities.
*It has also been reported that British Intelligence (the same ones who blame whites for Islamic extremism) bosses are set to launch a probe into suspected links between Birmingham-born militant Rashid Rauf and the Mumbai terror attack.
Security forces in India will examine connections between two Islamist Kashmiri groups thought to be behind the Mumbai assault, which has claimed almost 200 lives, and Rauf, who was known to be a member of both terror groups.
Rauf, 27, from Ward End, Birmingham — an Al Qaeda suspect said to be the “key player” behind the alleged liquid bomb plot to blow up transatlantic airliners — was killed in a missile strike last Saturday in North Western Pakistan by an unmanned US drone.
Sources have now revealed that he was planning a major attack at the time of his death, and that the Mumbai murders show all the hallmarks of one of Rauf’s “terror spectacular” plots.
The Indian Mujahidin, which carried out a blast in Delhi in September and warned that they would strike next in Mumbai, is understood to have been behind this week’s terror outrage.
The group is made up of several different militant organisations, the most dangerous of which are the Pakistani-based Kashmiri “freedom” movements Lashkar-e-Toiba (LET) and Jaish-e-Mohammed (JEM). Rauf was known to have strong links to both organisations.
He married a relative of JEM’s founder and worked with LET to train British jihadis who travelled to Pakistan. London 7/7 bombers Shehzad Tanweer and Mohammed Siddique Khan both studied at an LET madrassa near Lahore in 2004.
Filed under
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Mumbai attacks
by Winter Patriot
on Tuesday, December 02, 2008
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Sunday Mercury : Was Birmingham-born militant Rashid Rauf behind Mumbai attack?
Tuesday, December 02, 2008
Was Birmingham-born militant Rashid Rauf behind Mumbai attack?
By Ben Goldby | November 29, 2008
INTELLIGENCE bosses are set to launch a probe into suspected links between Birmingham-born militant Rashid Rauf and last week’s terror attack in Mumbai.
Security forces in India will examine connections between two Islamist Kashmiri groups thought to be behind the Mumbai assault, which has claimed almost 200 lives, and Rauf, who was known to be a member of both terror groups.
Rauf, 27, from Ward End, Birmingham –an Al Qaeda suspect said to be the “key player” behind the alleged liquid bomb plot to blow up transatlantic airliners – was killed in a missile strike last Saturday in North Western Pakistan by an unmanned US drone.
Sources have now revealed that he was planning a major attack at the time of his death, and that the Mumbai murders show all the hallmarks of one of Rauf’s “terror spectacular” plots.
The Indian Mujahidin, which carried out a blast in Delhi in September and warned that they would strike next in Mumbai, is understood to have been behind this week’s terror outrage.
The group is made up of several different militant organisations, the most dangerous of which are the Pakistani-based Kashmiri “freedom” movements Lashkar-e-Toiba (LET) and Jaish-e-Mohammed (JEM).
Rauf was known to have strong links to both organisations.
He married a relative of JEM’s founder and worked with LET to train British jihadis who travelled to Pakistan. London 7/7 bombers Shehzad Tanweer and Mohammed Siddique Khan both studied at an LET madrassa near Lahore in 2004.
Last night, a terror expert told the Sunday Mercury: “It is understood that this attack in Mumbai is the work of the Indian Mujahidin, based on plans and support from Kashmiri groups based in Pakistan.
“The planning seems to have been done by an Islamist militant group called Lashkar-e-Toiba and they have close links to other Kashmiri fighters including Jaish-e-Mohammed.
“In Rashid Rauf we have a man who dreamed up an alleged plot to blow up 10 transatlantic planes. We know he plotted spectacular attacks and we know that we was planning a terror operation when he was killed.
“This attack in Mumbai, with the synchronised terror strikes in multiple locations, is certainly consistent with his approach to militant tactics.”
Rauf fled to the tribal areas of North Western Pakistan in April, 2002 as West Midlands Police tried to question him over the death of his uncle Mohammed Saeed in Alum Rock.
The former Washwood Heath High School pupil sought sanctuary in his family’s ancestral village of Haveli Bagal after he was named as the prime suspect in his uncle’s murder.
He married a relative of JEM founder and spiritual leader Maulana Masood Azhar in 2003 and turned to radical Islam.
Intelligence reports say he took an active role in planning terror attacks and was the alleged ringleader of the liquid bomb plot to blow up 10 jetliners over the Atlantic Ocean.
In August 2006, as spooks were monitoring the alleged airline bomb plot, Rauf, who was under surveillance by both British and Pakistani secret services, was connected by officers to LET and Al Qaeda and was known to be transferring cash and instructions to members in the UK.
Although charges over the transatlantic plot were later dropped against Rauf, the CIA continued to track his activities and he was held by Pakistani police as detectives back in Birmingham sought his extradition over his uncle’s murder.
But in December 2007 Rauf gave guards the slip at a roadside Mosque after a hearing in Islamabad, and is believed to have fled back to the lawless tribal regions of North Western Pakistan.
At the time of his death Rauf was meeting with Egyptian extremist and senior Al Qaeda field commander Abu Zubair al-Masri in the tribal heartland of Waziristan.
Indian investigators will now probe the significance of that meeting, thought to have been a “council of war” to discuss jihadi attacks against western targets, and examine connections between LET, JEM and the Mumbai attacks.
Officials in London have insisted that there is no evidence yet that Britons have taken part in the planning or execution of the Mumbai assault, although they cannot rule it out.
Around 30 counter terrorism officers from the Met Police have now been sent to India to help with the investigation.
By Ben Goldby | November 29, 2008
INTELLIGENCE bosses are set to launch a probe into suspected links between Birmingham-born militant Rashid Rauf and last week’s terror attack in Mumbai.
Security forces in India will examine connections between two Islamist Kashmiri groups thought to be behind the Mumbai assault, which has claimed almost 200 lives, and Rauf, who was known to be a member of both terror groups.
Rauf, 27, from Ward End, Birmingham –an Al Qaeda suspect said to be the “key player” behind the alleged liquid bomb plot to blow up transatlantic airliners – was killed in a missile strike last Saturday in North Western Pakistan by an unmanned US drone.
Sources have now revealed that he was planning a major attack at the time of his death, and that the Mumbai murders show all the hallmarks of one of Rauf’s “terror spectacular” plots.
The Indian Mujahidin, which carried out a blast in Delhi in September and warned that they would strike next in Mumbai, is understood to have been behind this week’s terror outrage.
The group is made up of several different militant organisations, the most dangerous of which are the Pakistani-based Kashmiri “freedom” movements Lashkar-e-Toiba (LET) and Jaish-e-Mohammed (JEM).
Rauf was known to have strong links to both organisations.
He married a relative of JEM’s founder and worked with LET to train British jihadis who travelled to Pakistan. London 7/7 bombers Shehzad Tanweer and Mohammed Siddique Khan both studied at an LET madrassa near Lahore in 2004.
Last night, a terror expert told the Sunday Mercury: “It is understood that this attack in Mumbai is the work of the Indian Mujahidin, based on plans and support from Kashmiri groups based in Pakistan.
“The planning seems to have been done by an Islamist militant group called Lashkar-e-Toiba and they have close links to other Kashmiri fighters including Jaish-e-Mohammed.
“In Rashid Rauf we have a man who dreamed up an alleged plot to blow up 10 transatlantic planes. We know he plotted spectacular attacks and we know that we was planning a terror operation when he was killed.
“This attack in Mumbai, with the synchronised terror strikes in multiple locations, is certainly consistent with his approach to militant tactics.”
Rauf fled to the tribal areas of North Western Pakistan in April, 2002 as West Midlands Police tried to question him over the death of his uncle Mohammed Saeed in Alum Rock.
The former Washwood Heath High School pupil sought sanctuary in his family’s ancestral village of Haveli Bagal after he was named as the prime suspect in his uncle’s murder.
He married a relative of JEM founder and spiritual leader Maulana Masood Azhar in 2003 and turned to radical Islam.
Intelligence reports say he took an active role in planning terror attacks and was the alleged ringleader of the liquid bomb plot to blow up 10 jetliners over the Atlantic Ocean.
In August 2006, as spooks were monitoring the alleged airline bomb plot, Rauf, who was under surveillance by both British and Pakistani secret services, was connected by officers to LET and Al Qaeda and was known to be transferring cash and instructions to members in the UK.
Although charges over the transatlantic plot were later dropped against Rauf, the CIA continued to track his activities and he was held by Pakistani police as detectives back in Birmingham sought his extradition over his uncle’s murder.
But in December 2007 Rauf gave guards the slip at a roadside Mosque after a hearing in Islamabad, and is believed to have fled back to the lawless tribal regions of North Western Pakistan.
At the time of his death Rauf was meeting with Egyptian extremist and senior Al Qaeda field commander Abu Zubair al-Masri in the tribal heartland of Waziristan.
Indian investigators will now probe the significance of that meeting, thought to have been a “council of war” to discuss jihadi attacks against western targets, and examine connections between LET, JEM and the Mumbai attacks.
Officials in London have insisted that there is no evidence yet that Britons have taken part in the planning or execution of the Mumbai assault, although they cannot rule it out.
Around 30 counter terrorism officers from the Met Police have now been sent to India to help with the investigation.
Filed under
drones,
Jaish-e-Mohammed,
Lashkar-e-Toiba,
Mumbai attacks,
Rashid Rauf
by Winter Patriot
on Tuesday, December 02, 2008
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Outlook India : The Gateway Of India
Tuesday, December 02, 2008
The Gateway Of India
By mid-September, Indian agencies knew that the attack would come from the sea, by mid-November, they knew that the Taj hotel would be targeted... And yet... and yet... A blow by blow account of how the plan to attack Mumbai by sea was hatched and executed
Saikat Datta | November 29, 2008
In mid-September this year, the CIA station chief in Delhi sought an urgent meeting with his counterpart in R&AW to pass on some critical inputs. This was part of an understanding that Indian and American intelligence had institutionalised in the aftermath of 9/11. From its assets in Pakistan and Afghanistan, American intelligence had come to learn that the Lashkar-e-Toiba was planning to launch a major terrorist attack in Mumbai, which would be carried out from the sea.
This input was in conjunction with other inputs that Indian intelligence had received from various other sources. For instance, Riyasuddin, the son of Maulana Nasiruddin, who was under arrest for his alleged involvement in the assassination of the then Gujarat home minister Naren Pandya, had stated in his statements to the police that a sea-borne attack was being planned by certain terrorist groups abroad for an attack on Mumbai.
Similarly other vague inputs had also come in from Uttar Pradesh as well as other sources. But by September 24, Indian intelligence picked up several specific inputs. These were:
* An LeT module was being trained in a camp around Karachi for launching attacks from the sea for at least three months
* Yusuf Muzammil, the chief of operations of the LeT was in contact with an LeT operative stationed in Bangladesh (identified as "Yayah") who was being asked to procure international SIM cards for an operation that had been planned
* Information was also available that the team had been trained by Zakir-ur-Rehman Lakhvi, also known as "Chacha" an ageing ideologue who conducted most of the LeT's training modules.
By the middle of November, as Indian intelligence continued to check out further inputs, the pieces of an intricate jigsaw puzzle began to fall into place. Sources say they learnt that the attack would come from the sea and that the Taj Hotel would be a major target. However, it was not known whether this attack would be carried out by planting bombs in the hotel or by terrorists carrying small arms. Indian intelligence assessments were tilting towards bombs being planted and security at the hotel was beefed up accordingly to prevent terrorists from planting bombs inside the premises.
On November 18, R&AW passed on a specific advisory to the Coast Guard, which serves as the Lead intelligence Agency for the coastal area. The advisory asked the coast guard to intensify patrolling and look out for a suspicious vessel, probably of Pakistani origin, which had sailed off from Karachi. While the coast guard began to patrol the area with renewed intensity, the terrorists had an entirely different plan.
According to details available with Indian intelligence and the information given by the terrorist who was picked up by the Mumbai police in an encounter near Chowpatty, the terrorists hijacked an Indian fishing boat, the Kuber, somewhere near Pakistani waters. They beheaded the majority of the boat's crew of six and only allowed one crew-member, Amarsinh Solanki, to live so that he could help them with navigating the boat to Mumbai. The coast guard found a Global Positioning System abandoned on the fishing trawler that was drifting nearly four nautical miles off the coast of Mumbai early on Thursday, November 27 morning, several hours after the terrorist attack began.
While the coast guard was looking for a Pakistani or unidentified vessel, the Kuber (registration number 2303) blended in with the thousands of registered Indian fishing vessels out at sea.
This enabled the terrorists to avoid detection and slip into Badhwar park in Cuffe Parade in Mumbai before they began their operations. Most of them got into waiting boats that had been arranged by Karachi-based underworld don Dawood Ibrahim's diesel smuggling network in Mumbai. Arms, ammunition and plastic explosives were quickly transferred to the waiting boats that took the terrorists to the Gateway of India which was the pre-arranged launching pad for the terrorist attack.
What has surprised investigators piecing together the details of the attack is that the GPS recovered from the abandoned trawler, Kuber, had two maps fed into it to aid navigation. One was a route from Karachi that was plotted quite close to the Indian coast, while a return route had also been mapped into the GPS from the Mumbai coast back to Karachi. "We think this was done to give the terrorists some semblance of hope that they would go back home after a successful raid," a top security official told Outlook. The fact that these two maps were fed into the GPS has confirmed that there was some help from people with a naval or army background, and had extensive knowledge of navigation at sea.
What security officials have also confirmed is the fact that most of the terrorists were from Punjab in Pakistan. The arrested terrorist, Azmal Amir Qasab, a resident of Chippalpura Taluka in Ukkad Zilla, Punjab, Pakistan has told his interrogators that the terrorists had trained for over two months, much of it on the Karachi coast for the naval leg. They were trained in basic rudiments of conducting naval commando raids, given extensive biefings on the layout of South Mumbai with adequate footage for familiarity and CDs of alleged "atrocities" carried out against Muslims in India. Qasab has also given details of how two of their operatives checked into the Taj Hotel last Saturday, November 22, with a lot of equipment. The duo received several visitors with huge bags, apparently carrying RDX for the two IEDs which were defused by the Mumbai police on the night of the first attack.
Meanwhile, investigators are poring through the call data details downloaded from the satellite phone also recovered from the abandoned trawler. Many of the call details have revealed numbers that have been traced back to the LeT's chief of operations, Muzamil, as well as to Lakhvi. Interestingly, the international SIM cards recovered from the bodies of the killed terrorists correspond to the intelligence picked up earlier, when Muzamil had asked his Bangladesh operative Yayah, to procure them. He apparently also procured the fake Mauritian identity card recovered by the marine commandos.
Top security sources have also told Outlook that the intercepts made by the intelligence agencies while the NSG commando assault was underway clearly indicates that the terrorists were speaking to their handlers in Pakistan. Among the instructions passed on to them during the nearly 62-hour crisis were to throw grenades indiscriminately if they were in danger of being overpowered and to start fake negotiations to prolong the crisis. In fact, two such attempts at negotiations were made at Nariman Bhawan and the Oberoi-Trident hotel to stave off an impending assault, even though the terrorists had already killed the hostages.
In the days to come investigators will have to continue putting the pieces of the puzzle together to create a more comprehensive picture of the attack. Hidden among them will be key lessons on how to prevent similar attacks in the future.
By mid-September, Indian agencies knew that the attack would come from the sea, by mid-November, they knew that the Taj hotel would be targeted... And yet... and yet... A blow by blow account of how the plan to attack Mumbai by sea was hatched and executed
Saikat Datta | November 29, 2008
In mid-September this year, the CIA station chief in Delhi sought an urgent meeting with his counterpart in R&AW to pass on some critical inputs. This was part of an understanding that Indian and American intelligence had institutionalised in the aftermath of 9/11. From its assets in Pakistan and Afghanistan, American intelligence had come to learn that the Lashkar-e-Toiba was planning to launch a major terrorist attack in Mumbai, which would be carried out from the sea.
This input was in conjunction with other inputs that Indian intelligence had received from various other sources. For instance, Riyasuddin, the son of Maulana Nasiruddin, who was under arrest for his alleged involvement in the assassination of the then Gujarat home minister Naren Pandya, had stated in his statements to the police that a sea-borne attack was being planned by certain terrorist groups abroad for an attack on Mumbai.
Similarly other vague inputs had also come in from Uttar Pradesh as well as other sources. But by September 24, Indian intelligence picked up several specific inputs. These were:
* An LeT module was being trained in a camp around Karachi for launching attacks from the sea for at least three months
* Yusuf Muzammil, the chief of operations of the LeT was in contact with an LeT operative stationed in Bangladesh (identified as "Yayah") who was being asked to procure international SIM cards for an operation that had been planned
* Information was also available that the team had been trained by Zakir-ur-Rehman Lakhvi, also known as "Chacha" an ageing ideologue who conducted most of the LeT's training modules.
By the middle of November, as Indian intelligence continued to check out further inputs, the pieces of an intricate jigsaw puzzle began to fall into place. Sources say they learnt that the attack would come from the sea and that the Taj Hotel would be a major target. However, it was not known whether this attack would be carried out by planting bombs in the hotel or by terrorists carrying small arms. Indian intelligence assessments were tilting towards bombs being planted and security at the hotel was beefed up accordingly to prevent terrorists from planting bombs inside the premises.
On November 18, R&AW passed on a specific advisory to the Coast Guard, which serves as the Lead intelligence Agency for the coastal area. The advisory asked the coast guard to intensify patrolling and look out for a suspicious vessel, probably of Pakistani origin, which had sailed off from Karachi. While the coast guard began to patrol the area with renewed intensity, the terrorists had an entirely different plan.
According to details available with Indian intelligence and the information given by the terrorist who was picked up by the Mumbai police in an encounter near Chowpatty, the terrorists hijacked an Indian fishing boat, the Kuber, somewhere near Pakistani waters. They beheaded the majority of the boat's crew of six and only allowed one crew-member, Amarsinh Solanki, to live so that he could help them with navigating the boat to Mumbai. The coast guard found a Global Positioning System abandoned on the fishing trawler that was drifting nearly four nautical miles off the coast of Mumbai early on Thursday, November 27 morning, several hours after the terrorist attack began.
While the coast guard was looking for a Pakistani or unidentified vessel, the Kuber (registration number 2303) blended in with the thousands of registered Indian fishing vessels out at sea.
This enabled the terrorists to avoid detection and slip into Badhwar park in Cuffe Parade in Mumbai before they began their operations. Most of them got into waiting boats that had been arranged by Karachi-based underworld don Dawood Ibrahim's diesel smuggling network in Mumbai. Arms, ammunition and plastic explosives were quickly transferred to the waiting boats that took the terrorists to the Gateway of India which was the pre-arranged launching pad for the terrorist attack.
What has surprised investigators piecing together the details of the attack is that the GPS recovered from the abandoned trawler, Kuber, had two maps fed into it to aid navigation. One was a route from Karachi that was plotted quite close to the Indian coast, while a return route had also been mapped into the GPS from the Mumbai coast back to Karachi. "We think this was done to give the terrorists some semblance of hope that they would go back home after a successful raid," a top security official told Outlook. The fact that these two maps were fed into the GPS has confirmed that there was some help from people with a naval or army background, and had extensive knowledge of navigation at sea.
What security officials have also confirmed is the fact that most of the terrorists were from Punjab in Pakistan. The arrested terrorist, Azmal Amir Qasab, a resident of Chippalpura Taluka in Ukkad Zilla, Punjab, Pakistan has told his interrogators that the terrorists had trained for over two months, much of it on the Karachi coast for the naval leg. They were trained in basic rudiments of conducting naval commando raids, given extensive biefings on the layout of South Mumbai with adequate footage for familiarity and CDs of alleged "atrocities" carried out against Muslims in India. Qasab has also given details of how two of their operatives checked into the Taj Hotel last Saturday, November 22, with a lot of equipment. The duo received several visitors with huge bags, apparently carrying RDX for the two IEDs which were defused by the Mumbai police on the night of the first attack.
Meanwhile, investigators are poring through the call data details downloaded from the satellite phone also recovered from the abandoned trawler. Many of the call details have revealed numbers that have been traced back to the LeT's chief of operations, Muzamil, as well as to Lakhvi. Interestingly, the international SIM cards recovered from the bodies of the killed terrorists correspond to the intelligence picked up earlier, when Muzamil had asked his Bangladesh operative Yayah, to procure them. He apparently also procured the fake Mauritian identity card recovered by the marine commandos.
Top security sources have also told Outlook that the intercepts made by the intelligence agencies while the NSG commando assault was underway clearly indicates that the terrorists were speaking to their handlers in Pakistan. Among the instructions passed on to them during the nearly 62-hour crisis were to throw grenades indiscriminately if they were in danger of being overpowered and to start fake negotiations to prolong the crisis. In fact, two such attempts at negotiations were made at Nariman Bhawan and the Oberoi-Trident hotel to stave off an impending assault, even though the terrorists had already killed the hostages.
In the days to come investigators will have to continue putting the pieces of the puzzle together to create a more comprehensive picture of the attack. Hidden among them will be key lessons on how to prevent similar attacks in the future.
MSNBC : Attributes of India attacks suggest outside help
Tuesday, December 02, 2008
Attributes of India attacks suggest outside help
Analyst: 'This is a new, horrific milestone in the global jihad'
By Craig Whitlock and Karen DeYoung | Washington Post | November 28, 2008
BERLIN - Counterterrorism officials and experts said the scale, sophistication and targets involved in the Mumbai attacks were markedly different from previous terrorist plots in India and suggested the gunmen had received training from outside the country. But they cautioned it was too soon to tell who may have masterminded the operation, despite an assertion from a previously unknown Islamist radical group.
Officials in India, Europe and the United States said likely culprits included Islamist networks based in Pakistan that have received support in the past from Pakistan's intelligence agencies.
Analysts said this week's attacks surpassed previous plots carried out by domestic groups in terms of complexity, the number of people involved and their success in achieving their primary goal: namely, to spread fear.
"This is a new, horrific milestone in the global jihad," said Bruce Riedel, a former South Asia analyst for the CIA and National Security Council and author of the book "The Search for Al Qaeda." "No indigenous Indian group has this level of capability. The goal is to damage the symbol of India's economic renaissance, undermine investor confidence and provoke an India-Pakistani crisis."
Several analysts and officials said the attacks bore the hallmarks of Lashkar-i-Taiba and Jaish-i-Muhammad, two networks of Muslim extremists from Pakistan that have targeted India before. Jaish-i-Muhammad was blamed for an attack on the Indian Parliament in 2001.
'Army of the Pious'
Both groups have carried out a long campaign of violence in the disputed territory of Kashmir, which India and Pakistan have fought over for six decades. The roots of the long-running conflict are religious: A majority of India's population is Hindu, while most Pakistanis are Muslim.
A U.S. counterterrorism official, speaking on the condition of anonymity, said Lashkar-i-Taiba, which means "Army of the Pious," and Jaish-i-Muhammad, or "Soldiers of Muhammad," are "the thing people are starting to look at. But I can't caution enough to treat it as a theory, a working assumption. It's still too early for hard and fast" conclusions.
"What the Indians have in their favor," the official added, "is that they've got some of these guys. It seems logical that they can expect to work their way back reasonably quickly." Indian officials said several gunmen were captured.
In its Friday editions, the newspaper the Hindu reported that at least three of the suspects held by police were members of Lashkar-i-Taiba and that the assailants had arrived in Mumbai on a ship from Karachi, Pakistan.
Earlier, Pakistan's government condemned the attacks and warned India against jumping to conclusions about who was responsible. Lashkar-i-Taiba issued a statement denying involvement.
India has been plagued by a wave of terrorist attacks in recent years, many sparked by friction between Hindu nationalists and minority Muslim groups. The shootings in Mumbai were far from the worst to strike India's financial capital; bombings in 1993 and 2006 each killed more than 180 people.
A group calling itself the Deccan Mujaheddin asserted responsibility for the attacks in e-mails sent to Indian media organizations Wednesday. Officials said they had never heard of the group.
Organized camps?
Television footage showed the assailants carrying automatic rifles and backpacks filled with ammunition and grenades. Analysts said the fact that the gunmen quickly fanned across the city and were able to hold off Indian security forces over three days suggested that they had received training at organized camps.
"What is striking about this is a fair amount of planning had to go into this type of attack," said Roger W. Cressey, a former White House counterterrorism official in the Clinton and Bush administrations. "This is not a seat-of-the-pants operation. This group had to receive some training or support from professionals in the terrorism business."
Some experts said the operation bore resemblances to plots orchestrated by al-Qaeda, in that it involved multiple, simultaneous attacks targeting foreigners. In this case, according to witnesses, the gunmen sought out Americans and Britons, and also took hostages at the local headquarters of an Orthodox Jewish group.
Others said they were dubious of a connection to Osama bin Laden's organization. They said al-Qaeda has relied on suicide bombers, not gunmen, and is not known to have cells in India.
David Miliband, Britain's foreign secretary, told reporters that it was "premature to talk about links to al-Qaeda" and that it was still unclear who the intended targets were. "This is only the latest in a series of attacks in India over the last year or two," he said, adding, "Terrorism is not just a war against the West."
Long list of suspects
Peter Neumann, a terrorism analyst at King's College in London, noted that dozens of gunmen were involved. "This doesn't mean it's al-Qaeda, or they take orders from bin Laden, but I'm pretty sure it's not some leaderless, grass-roots thing."
On Wednesday, al-Qaeda's propaganda arm released a video on the Internet featuring an interview with Ayman al-Zawahiri, the network's deputy leader. He made no mention of the attacks in Mumbai; it was unclear when the video was produced.
Other experts warned that there is a long list of suspects who could have played a role. For instance, Indian officials have blamed the 1993 bombings in Mumbai, which killed 257 people, on Dawood Ibrahim, an organized crime figure who remains on the run.
"Anything could be in the cards," said Magnus Ranstorp, a terrorism analyst at the Swedish National Defense College. "With most terrorist attacks, it's relatively clear-cut who is involved. In this case, it could be all sorts of constellations that are at work."
DeYoung reported from Washington. Special correspondent Karla Adam in London contributed to this report.
Analyst: 'This is a new, horrific milestone in the global jihad'
By Craig Whitlock and Karen DeYoung | Washington Post | November 28, 2008
BERLIN - Counterterrorism officials and experts said the scale, sophistication and targets involved in the Mumbai attacks were markedly different from previous terrorist plots in India and suggested the gunmen had received training from outside the country. But they cautioned it was too soon to tell who may have masterminded the operation, despite an assertion from a previously unknown Islamist radical group.
Officials in India, Europe and the United States said likely culprits included Islamist networks based in Pakistan that have received support in the past from Pakistan's intelligence agencies.
Analysts said this week's attacks surpassed previous plots carried out by domestic groups in terms of complexity, the number of people involved and their success in achieving their primary goal: namely, to spread fear.
"This is a new, horrific milestone in the global jihad," said Bruce Riedel, a former South Asia analyst for the CIA and National Security Council and author of the book "The Search for Al Qaeda." "No indigenous Indian group has this level of capability. The goal is to damage the symbol of India's economic renaissance, undermine investor confidence and provoke an India-Pakistani crisis."
Several analysts and officials said the attacks bore the hallmarks of Lashkar-i-Taiba and Jaish-i-Muhammad, two networks of Muslim extremists from Pakistan that have targeted India before. Jaish-i-Muhammad was blamed for an attack on the Indian Parliament in 2001.
'Army of the Pious'
Both groups have carried out a long campaign of violence in the disputed territory of Kashmir, which India and Pakistan have fought over for six decades. The roots of the long-running conflict are religious: A majority of India's population is Hindu, while most Pakistanis are Muslim.
A U.S. counterterrorism official, speaking on the condition of anonymity, said Lashkar-i-Taiba, which means "Army of the Pious," and Jaish-i-Muhammad, or "Soldiers of Muhammad," are "the thing people are starting to look at. But I can't caution enough to treat it as a theory, a working assumption. It's still too early for hard and fast" conclusions.
"What the Indians have in their favor," the official added, "is that they've got some of these guys. It seems logical that they can expect to work their way back reasonably quickly." Indian officials said several gunmen were captured.
In its Friday editions, the newspaper the Hindu reported that at least three of the suspects held by police were members of Lashkar-i-Taiba and that the assailants had arrived in Mumbai on a ship from Karachi, Pakistan.
Earlier, Pakistan's government condemned the attacks and warned India against jumping to conclusions about who was responsible. Lashkar-i-Taiba issued a statement denying involvement.
India has been plagued by a wave of terrorist attacks in recent years, many sparked by friction between Hindu nationalists and minority Muslim groups. The shootings in Mumbai were far from the worst to strike India's financial capital; bombings in 1993 and 2006 each killed more than 180 people.
A group calling itself the Deccan Mujaheddin asserted responsibility for the attacks in e-mails sent to Indian media organizations Wednesday. Officials said they had never heard of the group.
Organized camps?
Television footage showed the assailants carrying automatic rifles and backpacks filled with ammunition and grenades. Analysts said the fact that the gunmen quickly fanned across the city and were able to hold off Indian security forces over three days suggested that they had received training at organized camps.
"What is striking about this is a fair amount of planning had to go into this type of attack," said Roger W. Cressey, a former White House counterterrorism official in the Clinton and Bush administrations. "This is not a seat-of-the-pants operation. This group had to receive some training or support from professionals in the terrorism business."
Some experts said the operation bore resemblances to plots orchestrated by al-Qaeda, in that it involved multiple, simultaneous attacks targeting foreigners. In this case, according to witnesses, the gunmen sought out Americans and Britons, and also took hostages at the local headquarters of an Orthodox Jewish group.
Others said they were dubious of a connection to Osama bin Laden's organization. They said al-Qaeda has relied on suicide bombers, not gunmen, and is not known to have cells in India.
David Miliband, Britain's foreign secretary, told reporters that it was "premature to talk about links to al-Qaeda" and that it was still unclear who the intended targets were. "This is only the latest in a series of attacks in India over the last year or two," he said, adding, "Terrorism is not just a war against the West."
Long list of suspects
Peter Neumann, a terrorism analyst at King's College in London, noted that dozens of gunmen were involved. "This doesn't mean it's al-Qaeda, or they take orders from bin Laden, but I'm pretty sure it's not some leaderless, grass-roots thing."
On Wednesday, al-Qaeda's propaganda arm released a video on the Internet featuring an interview with Ayman al-Zawahiri, the network's deputy leader. He made no mention of the attacks in Mumbai; it was unclear when the video was produced.
Other experts warned that there is a long list of suspects who could have played a role. For instance, Indian officials have blamed the 1993 bombings in Mumbai, which killed 257 people, on Dawood Ibrahim, an organized crime figure who remains on the run.
"Anything could be in the cards," said Magnus Ranstorp, a terrorism analyst at the Swedish National Defense College. "With most terrorist attacks, it's relatively clear-cut who is involved. In this case, it could be all sorts of constellations that are at work."
DeYoung reported from Washington. Special correspondent Karla Adam in London contributed to this report.
Times of India : Mumbai attack: Pak role under scrutiny
Monday, December 01, 2008
Mumbai attack: Pak role under scrutiny
Chidanand Rajghatta, TNN | November 27, 2008
WASHINGTON: Strategic gurus and security analysts in the US and from across the world are examining Pakistan's role in terrorism following yet another terror episode in India ending with fingers pointed at its widely-reviled neighbour.
While initial reports from India suggested the Mumbai carnage was a localised attack by militant malcontents in India because of the "Deccan Mujaheddin" decoy that was used to claim responsibility, evidence cited by Indian army and security experts based on phone intercepts, nature of weaponry, mode of entry by sea etc., has quickly focused the attention on Pakistan.
The statement by India's normally cautious and restrained prime minister, Manmohan Singh, that groups based across the border, a thinly-disguised reference to Pakistan, has also galvanized the strategic and security community into examining Islamabad's role in the region that has already been subjected to scrutiny in the past.
"From a tactical perspective most terrorist attacks in India have been carried out through the use of improvised explosive devices planted on bicycles, motorcycles and cars, and triggered by timers or mobile telephones. In contrast, according to press reports, the attackers involved in the latest Mumbai violence were armed only with Kalashnikov assault rifles, principally, and hand grenades," Jane's Country Risk Daily Report noted in an assessment on Thursday that discounted an internal insurgent attack.
The report also said the apparent focus on killing or capturing foreign businesspeople, specifically US and UK nationals, which has never occurred before, also suggested "a wider global anti-Western agenda." This stands in contrast to the national issues that appeared to motivate Indian Mujahideen, it said.
Experts also said the heavy weaponry, grenades, and the sustained attack pointed to intense training and planning beyond the scope of indigenous groups.
Other intelligence experts and websites also zeroed in on Pakistan's role in the region. "There have been reports from credible sources for years that Pakistani intelligence has used terrorist groups to conduct war-by-proxy against traditional rival India. With the latest horrific attacks throughout Mumbai, evidence continues to accumulate that may add new substance to such reports," the website Washington Examiner noted.
US officials and lawmakers refrained from naming Pakistan, but their condemnation of "Islamist terrorism" left little doubt where their anxieties lay. "It is often said that India and America have a natural bond as the two largest democracies. Today, we share a bond of a common enemy: what the 9/11 Commission identified as Islamist terrorism. Islamist ideology is spreading across South Asia, and must be stamped out," California Congressman Ed Royce said.
What has added potency to the latest charges against Islamabad is the Bush administration's own assessment - leaked to the US media - that Pakistan's intelligence agency ISI was linked to the bombing of the Indian Embassy in Kabul some weeks back that killed nearly 60 people including a much-admired Indian diplomat and a respected senior defense official.
This time, the US scrutiny is more intense because American, Israeli, and other western nationals appear to have been singled out during the carnage. Hundreds of Indians have died in dozens of terrorist attacks in India in the past two decades without Washington losing too much sleep over it. In fact, Indian officials have often complained in private that successive US administrations have been incredibly indulgent about Pakistan's brazen involvement in fomenting terror in India, believing it would not touch the US.
Part of the coddling goes back to US patronage of the ISI during the Afghan war. As a result, Washington has done little to bring to book Dawood Ibrahim, a terrorist charged with masterminding the serial bomb blasts in Mumbai in 1993 that took 258 lives, although Indian intelligence agencies have identified him as living in Karachi under ISI protection.
The US has also said Dawood Ibrahim is linked to al-Qaida. While all major terror attacks in India are typically accompanied by knee-jerk charges from India and shrill denials by Pakistan, analysts point to mounting evidence that the Pakistan state, especially under its military, has done little to combat the scourge of terrorism. Several terrorist and extremist leaders such as Masood Azhar and "Prof" Hafeez Mohammed Saeed, continue to thrive in Pakistan, often under official patronage. Extremists openly preach terrorism in jihadi gatherings overseen by ISI.
The Pakistani establishment has also dragged its feet on prosecuting Omar Saeed Sheikh, an accused in the Daniel Pearl murder because of his influential connections in the higher echelons of the ISI. Another terrorist Rashid Rauf, also known as the shoe-bomber, was killed last week in a US predator strike, months after he 'escaped' from Pakistani police custody while being escorted for a hearing. Western and Indian intelligence communities believe men like Sheikh and Rauf are protected by the ISI or rogue elements in the ISI.
The Bush administration has pressed for a purging of the ISI of its rogue and extremist elements, but the new civilian government in Pakistan, which has made better relations with India a priority, is finding it hard to do it. Hard-line militaristic elements in Pakistan have fuming about the overtures made by both President Asif Ali Zardari and opposition leader Nawaz Sharief towards India.
The Pakistani military, which controls the ISI, has resisted any attempt to make it subservient to the civilian government because the army uses it both as a fighting arm for its proxy war against India and also to spy on its own civilian government.
Among the several question that security experts are grappling is the motive behind the latest attack and who stands to gain by it. The terrorists have notably not even raised the Kashmir issue for their action to be linked to the separatist cause. Nor did they attempt to extract any specific concession in exchange for hostages, other than to demand the release of "all mujaheddin," according to one report.
They seemed intent on causing mayhem and dying in the same suicidal jihadi manner that was evident in the attack on India’s parliament and on the Akshardham temple earlier in this decade. Their victims, besides the scores of people who died, included India’s booming economy and tourism, both of which was the envy of a troubled neighbourhood.
Chidanand Rajghatta, TNN | November 27, 2008
WASHINGTON: Strategic gurus and security analysts in the US and from across the world are examining Pakistan's role in terrorism following yet another terror episode in India ending with fingers pointed at its widely-reviled neighbour.
While initial reports from India suggested the Mumbai carnage was a localised attack by militant malcontents in India because of the "Deccan Mujaheddin" decoy that was used to claim responsibility, evidence cited by Indian army and security experts based on phone intercepts, nature of weaponry, mode of entry by sea etc., has quickly focused the attention on Pakistan.
The statement by India's normally cautious and restrained prime minister, Manmohan Singh, that groups based across the border, a thinly-disguised reference to Pakistan, has also galvanized the strategic and security community into examining Islamabad's role in the region that has already been subjected to scrutiny in the past.
"From a tactical perspective most terrorist attacks in India have been carried out through the use of improvised explosive devices planted on bicycles, motorcycles and cars, and triggered by timers or mobile telephones. In contrast, according to press reports, the attackers involved in the latest Mumbai violence were armed only with Kalashnikov assault rifles, principally, and hand grenades," Jane's Country Risk Daily Report noted in an assessment on Thursday that discounted an internal insurgent attack.
The report also said the apparent focus on killing or capturing foreign businesspeople, specifically US and UK nationals, which has never occurred before, also suggested "a wider global anti-Western agenda." This stands in contrast to the national issues that appeared to motivate Indian Mujahideen, it said.
Experts also said the heavy weaponry, grenades, and the sustained attack pointed to intense training and planning beyond the scope of indigenous groups.
Other intelligence experts and websites also zeroed in on Pakistan's role in the region. "There have been reports from credible sources for years that Pakistani intelligence has used terrorist groups to conduct war-by-proxy against traditional rival India. With the latest horrific attacks throughout Mumbai, evidence continues to accumulate that may add new substance to such reports," the website Washington Examiner noted.
US officials and lawmakers refrained from naming Pakistan, but their condemnation of "Islamist terrorism" left little doubt where their anxieties lay. "It is often said that India and America have a natural bond as the two largest democracies. Today, we share a bond of a common enemy: what the 9/11 Commission identified as Islamist terrorism. Islamist ideology is spreading across South Asia, and must be stamped out," California Congressman Ed Royce said.
What has added potency to the latest charges against Islamabad is the Bush administration's own assessment - leaked to the US media - that Pakistan's intelligence agency ISI was linked to the bombing of the Indian Embassy in Kabul some weeks back that killed nearly 60 people including a much-admired Indian diplomat and a respected senior defense official.
This time, the US scrutiny is more intense because American, Israeli, and other western nationals appear to have been singled out during the carnage. Hundreds of Indians have died in dozens of terrorist attacks in India in the past two decades without Washington losing too much sleep over it. In fact, Indian officials have often complained in private that successive US administrations have been incredibly indulgent about Pakistan's brazen involvement in fomenting terror in India, believing it would not touch the US.
Part of the coddling goes back to US patronage of the ISI during the Afghan war. As a result, Washington has done little to bring to book Dawood Ibrahim, a terrorist charged with masterminding the serial bomb blasts in Mumbai in 1993 that took 258 lives, although Indian intelligence agencies have identified him as living in Karachi under ISI protection.
The US has also said Dawood Ibrahim is linked to al-Qaida. While all major terror attacks in India are typically accompanied by knee-jerk charges from India and shrill denials by Pakistan, analysts point to mounting evidence that the Pakistan state, especially under its military, has done little to combat the scourge of terrorism. Several terrorist and extremist leaders such as Masood Azhar and "Prof" Hafeez Mohammed Saeed, continue to thrive in Pakistan, often under official patronage. Extremists openly preach terrorism in jihadi gatherings overseen by ISI.
The Pakistani establishment has also dragged its feet on prosecuting Omar Saeed Sheikh, an accused in the Daniel Pearl murder because of his influential connections in the higher echelons of the ISI. Another terrorist Rashid Rauf, also known as the shoe-bomber, was killed last week in a US predator strike, months after he 'escaped' from Pakistani police custody while being escorted for a hearing. Western and Indian intelligence communities believe men like Sheikh and Rauf are protected by the ISI or rogue elements in the ISI.
The Bush administration has pressed for a purging of the ISI of its rogue and extremist elements, but the new civilian government in Pakistan, which has made better relations with India a priority, is finding it hard to do it. Hard-line militaristic elements in Pakistan have fuming about the overtures made by both President Asif Ali Zardari and opposition leader Nawaz Sharief towards India.
The Pakistani military, which controls the ISI, has resisted any attempt to make it subservient to the civilian government because the army uses it both as a fighting arm for its proxy war against India and also to spy on its own civilian government.
Among the several question that security experts are grappling is the motive behind the latest attack and who stands to gain by it. The terrorists have notably not even raised the Kashmir issue for their action to be linked to the separatist cause. Nor did they attempt to extract any specific concession in exchange for hostages, other than to demand the release of "all mujaheddin," according to one report.
They seemed intent on causing mayhem and dying in the same suicidal jihadi manner that was evident in the attack on India’s parliament and on the Akshardham temple earlier in this decade. Their victims, besides the scores of people who died, included India’s booming economy and tourism, both of which was the envy of a troubled neighbourhood.
Prison Planet : Media Forced To Backtrack On Al-Qaeda Link To Mumbai Attacks
Saturday, November 29, 2008
Media Forced To Backtrack On Al-Qaeda Link To Mumbai Attacks
Paul Joseph Watson | November 28, 2008
After brazenly declaring that the Mumbai attacks were the work of Al-Qaeda, the corporate media has been forced to backtrack, while India continues to blame Pakistan in a dangerous escalation of rhetoric between the two nuclear-armed powers.
Bellicose propaganda about Bin Laden being behind the massacre, which was initially propagated by the BBC, London Times and Fox News amongst others, has largely evaporated, with the majority of the establishment press being forced to admit they have no idea who was behind the siege on India’s financial capital.
However, India’s claim that Pakistan had a hand in the attacks is beginning to find favor in the U.S., where one counterterrorism official told CNN, “the level of sophistication in the attack leads officials to believe that it might be tied to Lashkar-e-Tayyiba (Army of the Pure), an Islamic extremist group that has carried out previous attacks in India.”
Lashkar-e-Tayyiba would be a useful scapegoat because it has alleged links both to Al-Qaeda and Pakistani’s ISI secret service, but since the group has vehemently denied responsibility and terrorists normally like to claim responsibility for their handiwork, any attempt to pin the blame is likely to run out of steam. Lashkar-e-Tayyiba always claim responsibility for their attacks, so their outright denial is the death knell for this explanation.
That India would immediately exploit the tragedy to demonize their arch-enemy Pakistan was fully expected, but how Pakistan, which has recently made numerous peaceful overtures towards India, could possibly benefit from crazed terrorists indiscriminately gunning down innocent people in shocking scenes played out on international television defies belief.
But that reasoning did not prevent India’s Foreign Minister Pranab Mukherjee from telling a press conference today that, “Preliminary evidence, prima facie evidence, indicates elements with links to Pakistan are involved.”
In reality, as we have repeatedly emphasized, the attacks were likely not the work of Al-Qaeda, Pakistan, the Mossad or the CIA, but Indian Muslims.
As author Tariq Ali points out today, “The Indian Prime Minister, Manmohan Singh, has insisted that the terrorists were based outside the country. The Indian media has echoed this line of argument with Pakistan (via the Lashkar-e-Taiba) and al-Qaeda listed as the usual suspects.”
“But this is a meditated edifice of official India’s political imagination. Its function is to deny that the terrorists could be a homegrown variety, a product of the radicalization of young Indian Muslims who have finally given up on the indigenous political system. To accept this view would imply that the country’s political physicians need to heal themselves.”
“Why should it be such a surprise if the perpetrators are themselves Indian Muslims? Its hardly a secret that there has been much anger within the poorest sections of the Muslim community against the systematic discrimination and acts of violence carried out against them of which the 2002 anti-Muslim pogrom in shining Gujarat was only the most blatant and the most investigated episode, supported by the Chief Minister of the State and the local state apparatuses.”
“Add to this the continuing sore of Kashmir which has for decades been treated as a colony by Indian troops with random arrests, torture and rape of Kashmiris an everyday occurrence. Conditions have been much worse than in Tibet, but have aroused little sympathy in the West where the defense of human rights is heavily instrumentalised.”
The identity and motive behind the terrorists is reasonably clear, these young men are disenfranchised, revenge-driven Indian Muslims, along with a smattering of Pakistanis, Kashmiris and Bangladeshis, based in India not Pakistan, who hate Hindus and believe it is their duty to kick-start a wider tribal war, which is why the vast majority of those killed were Indians, not foreigners, Brits or Americans.
The terrorists were not dispatched on their mission by the Pakistan government or Osama bin Laden, they are mostly Indians who represent a domestic problem for the Indian government, which is why the authorities are seeking to deflect blame and exploit the tragedy to demonize Pakistan in the eyes of the international community.
The spin that the terrorists deliberately targeted American and British citizens is still being pumped out by the western corporate media, despite the fact that only one Briton died, himself being originally from Cyprus, in comparison to well over a hundred Indians, and despite the fact that the rampage was a completely indiscriminate massacre.
The western propaganda machine has taken a domestic problem, which expresses itself almost on a monthly basis in India with routine bombings and attacks, and amplified it beyond all proportion to claim that the attacks were an assault on western democracy, capitalism, and ultimately the Anglo-American power alliance.
The horrible slaughter of hundreds of mostly Indian civilians in Mumbai will now be used as a poster child for continued bombing campaigns inside Pakistani territory and an expansion of the ailing war on terror under President elect Barack Obama, which in the long term only means that more innocent lives will be lost.
Paul Joseph Watson | November 28, 2008
After brazenly declaring that the Mumbai attacks were the work of Al-Qaeda, the corporate media has been forced to backtrack, while India continues to blame Pakistan in a dangerous escalation of rhetoric between the two nuclear-armed powers.
Bellicose propaganda about Bin Laden being behind the massacre, which was initially propagated by the BBC, London Times and Fox News amongst others, has largely evaporated, with the majority of the establishment press being forced to admit they have no idea who was behind the siege on India’s financial capital.
However, India’s claim that Pakistan had a hand in the attacks is beginning to find favor in the U.S., where one counterterrorism official told CNN, “the level of sophistication in the attack leads officials to believe that it might be tied to Lashkar-e-Tayyiba (Army of the Pure), an Islamic extremist group that has carried out previous attacks in India.”
Lashkar-e-Tayyiba would be a useful scapegoat because it has alleged links both to Al-Qaeda and Pakistani’s ISI secret service, but since the group has vehemently denied responsibility and terrorists normally like to claim responsibility for their handiwork, any attempt to pin the blame is likely to run out of steam. Lashkar-e-Tayyiba always claim responsibility for their attacks, so their outright denial is the death knell for this explanation.
That India would immediately exploit the tragedy to demonize their arch-enemy Pakistan was fully expected, but how Pakistan, which has recently made numerous peaceful overtures towards India, could possibly benefit from crazed terrorists indiscriminately gunning down innocent people in shocking scenes played out on international television defies belief.
But that reasoning did not prevent India’s Foreign Minister Pranab Mukherjee from telling a press conference today that, “Preliminary evidence, prima facie evidence, indicates elements with links to Pakistan are involved.”
In reality, as we have repeatedly emphasized, the attacks were likely not the work of Al-Qaeda, Pakistan, the Mossad or the CIA, but Indian Muslims.
As author Tariq Ali points out today, “The Indian Prime Minister, Manmohan Singh, has insisted that the terrorists were based outside the country. The Indian media has echoed this line of argument with Pakistan (via the Lashkar-e-Taiba) and al-Qaeda listed as the usual suspects.”
“But this is a meditated edifice of official India’s political imagination. Its function is to deny that the terrorists could be a homegrown variety, a product of the radicalization of young Indian Muslims who have finally given up on the indigenous political system. To accept this view would imply that the country’s political physicians need to heal themselves.”
“Why should it be such a surprise if the perpetrators are themselves Indian Muslims? Its hardly a secret that there has been much anger within the poorest sections of the Muslim community against the systematic discrimination and acts of violence carried out against them of which the 2002 anti-Muslim pogrom in shining Gujarat was only the most blatant and the most investigated episode, supported by the Chief Minister of the State and the local state apparatuses.”
“Add to this the continuing sore of Kashmir which has for decades been treated as a colony by Indian troops with random arrests, torture and rape of Kashmiris an everyday occurrence. Conditions have been much worse than in Tibet, but have aroused little sympathy in the West where the defense of human rights is heavily instrumentalised.”
The identity and motive behind the terrorists is reasonably clear, these young men are disenfranchised, revenge-driven Indian Muslims, along with a smattering of Pakistanis, Kashmiris and Bangladeshis, based in India not Pakistan, who hate Hindus and believe it is their duty to kick-start a wider tribal war, which is why the vast majority of those killed were Indians, not foreigners, Brits or Americans.
The terrorists were not dispatched on their mission by the Pakistan government or Osama bin Laden, they are mostly Indians who represent a domestic problem for the Indian government, which is why the authorities are seeking to deflect blame and exploit the tragedy to demonize Pakistan in the eyes of the international community.
The spin that the terrorists deliberately targeted American and British citizens is still being pumped out by the western corporate media, despite the fact that only one Briton died, himself being originally from Cyprus, in comparison to well over a hundred Indians, and despite the fact that the rampage was a completely indiscriminate massacre.
The western propaganda machine has taken a domestic problem, which expresses itself almost on a monthly basis in India with routine bombings and attacks, and amplified it beyond all proportion to claim that the attacks were an assault on western democracy, capitalism, and ultimately the Anglo-American power alliance.
The horrible slaughter of hundreds of mostly Indian civilians in Mumbai will now be used as a poster child for continued bombing campaigns inside Pakistani territory and an expansion of the ailing war on terror under President elect Barack Obama, which in the long term only means that more innocent lives will be lost.
CNN : Who is to blame for Mumbai attacks?
Saturday, November 29, 2008
Who is to blame for Mumbai attacks?
November 27, 2008
A group calling itself the Deccan Mujahideen has claimed responsibility for Wednesday's coordinated and deadly attacks in southern Mumbai, India, but security analysts know next to nothing about the group, and some discount its claim.
Intelligence officials from India and beyond are trying to determine who the attackers were and what their motivation was. The attacks left at least 125 people dead and more than 300 injured at a handful of sites across Mumbai.
"Deccan Mujahideen seem to be this amazing group that has come out of nowhere, that has been operating under the radar for all this time, yet able to mount such a sophisticated and well-coordinated attack," security analyst Will Geddes told CNN. And that, he suggested, is unlikely.
One highly placed intelligence official who has been briefed on the attacks said that the head of the operation is a Bangladeshi and that the militants are Indians, Kashmiris and Bangladeshis. The Indian military has sustained a large number of casualties, the source said.
A U.S. counterterrorism official said the level of sophistication in the attack leads officials to believe that it might be tied to Lashkar-e-Tayyiba (Army of the Pure), an Islamic extremist group that has carried out previous attacks in India. Video Watch CNN's Phil Black look at who may be behind the attacks »
LeT, as the group is known, is thought to have been responsible for a string of bombs that ripped through packed Mumbai commuter trains and platforms in July 2006, killing more than 200 people.
The group denied involvement in the attacks Thursday.
"The LeT has no links with Deccan Mujahideen," a caller identifying himself as Abdulla Ghaznavi, an LeT spokesman, told CNN. He said the group condemns the Mumbai attacks and demands an international inquiry into them. iReport.com: Are you there? Send photos and video and share your story
The U.S. State Department says Lashkar-e-Tayyiba has several thousand members in the Pakistan-controlled part of Kashmir and calls it one of the three largest and best-trained groups fighting against India.
Kashmir, divided between India and Pakistan and claimed by both, has been wracked by an 18-year separatist campaign that authorities say has left at least 43,000 dead. Video Watch: Analyst says 'don't jump to conclusions' »
The counterterrorism official mentioned another group, Jaish-e-Mohammed, which is based in Pakistan and, like LeT, fights for the end of Indian rule in Kashmir. The use of fighters with handheld weapons and grenades against fixed targets would be the type of attack either group would be capable of conducting, the official said.
Don't Miss
* Mumbai toll climbs as hotel standoffs continue
* iReport.com: Are you there? Tell your story, send photos
* View all videos from Mumbai
* Special report: Attacks in Mumbai
What is different is the deliberate targeting of Westerners, the official said.
A senior U.S. official said, "our attention is focused on the sophistication of the execution of the attacks." Video Watch a witness describe the scene »
The sophistication was "to the extent it does not seem like Deccan Mujahideen could carry it off, so the question is, did they have outside help?" the source asked.
Both U.S. sources, meanwhile, said the attacks do not seem to point to al Qaeda, which usually launches mass-casualty attacks using vehicles or suicide vests and does not usually take hostages.
Another group being mentioned as a possible culprit is the Indian Mujahideen, a Muslim militant group that emerged about a year ago. Despite its relatively new status, the organization is thought to have the organizational capability to carry out such attacks, said Paul Cruickshank, a fellow at the Center on Law and Security at New York University's School of Law.
The group has declared "open war" against India in retaliation for what it said were 60 years of Muslim persecution and the country's support of U.S. policies.
In September, the group said it was behind a series of explosions that ripped through busy marketplaces in New Delhi, killing 24 people and wounding about 100. The group also claimed responsibility in May for near-simultaneous bomb attacks that killed 63 people in the northwest city of Jaipur.
Officially, the Indian government has said no one has claimed responsibility for this week's Mumbai attacks. The Deccan Mujahideen claims came in e-mails to several Indian media outlets.
Deccan refers to the Deccan Plateau, which makes up the majority of the southern part of the country. "Deccan" is an Anglicized form of "dakkhin," which means south. Read more on the international reaction
Mujahideen translates into "those engaged in the struggle for jihad." Although "jihad" in Islam can mean any endeavor that requires dedication, the term has taken on a militant tone in recent years.
Indian Prime Minister Manmohan Singh suggested in a television address that the attacks were launched by people from outside the country.
"It is evident that the group which carried out these attacks, based outside the country, had come with single-minded determination to create havoc in the financial capital of the country," Singh said.
Indian security experts agree that the attackers came from outside the country.
"What you're seeing is that these types of attacks are established. There's a network. There's well-planned reconnaissance and logistics and financial support. It could only be from a group that's receiving international support, obviously with a domestic dimension," terrorism expert Sajjan Gohel said.
"This time, there was a multipronged approach. It wasn't just about targeting Indians. It was an aim, but it wasn't the only one," Gohel said. "They also wanted to go after Westerners, as well. They wanted to create a lack of confidence in people traveling to India, hit at the economy, hit at the tourism industry."
Fingers have also been pointed toward Pakistan, India's neighbor. The two nations, both nuclear powers, have a tense relationship.
"It's everybody's right to say what they want to say, but as far as my country is concerned, we are already hit by this terrorism," Pakistani Prime Minister Yousuf Raza Gilani told CNN's Reza Sayah. Video Watch the Pakistani PM condemn the attacks »
"I think this is a heinous crime, and we condemn it," Gilani said. "And I think this terrorism is a menace for the whole world, and therefore we have to work jointly to combat terrorism and extremism."
Husain Haqqani, Pakistan's ambassador to the United States, released a statement saying that terrorism "is a threat to both India and Pakistan."
"Pakistan has vehemently condemned the terrorist attacks in Mumbai. It is unfair to blame Pakistan or Pakistanis for these acts of terrorism even before an investigation is undertaken," Haqqani's statement reads. "Instead of scoring political points at the expense of a neighboring country that is itself a victim of terrorism, it is time for India's leaders to work together with Pakistan's elected leaders in putting up a joint front against terrorism."
November 27, 2008
A group calling itself the Deccan Mujahideen has claimed responsibility for Wednesday's coordinated and deadly attacks in southern Mumbai, India, but security analysts know next to nothing about the group, and some discount its claim.
Intelligence officials from India and beyond are trying to determine who the attackers were and what their motivation was. The attacks left at least 125 people dead and more than 300 injured at a handful of sites across Mumbai.
"Deccan Mujahideen seem to be this amazing group that has come out of nowhere, that has been operating under the radar for all this time, yet able to mount such a sophisticated and well-coordinated attack," security analyst Will Geddes told CNN. And that, he suggested, is unlikely.
One highly placed intelligence official who has been briefed on the attacks said that the head of the operation is a Bangladeshi and that the militants are Indians, Kashmiris and Bangladeshis. The Indian military has sustained a large number of casualties, the source said.
A U.S. counterterrorism official said the level of sophistication in the attack leads officials to believe that it might be tied to Lashkar-e-Tayyiba (Army of the Pure), an Islamic extremist group that has carried out previous attacks in India. Video Watch CNN's Phil Black look at who may be behind the attacks »
LeT, as the group is known, is thought to have been responsible for a string of bombs that ripped through packed Mumbai commuter trains and platforms in July 2006, killing more than 200 people.
The group denied involvement in the attacks Thursday.
"The LeT has no links with Deccan Mujahideen," a caller identifying himself as Abdulla Ghaznavi, an LeT spokesman, told CNN. He said the group condemns the Mumbai attacks and demands an international inquiry into them. iReport.com: Are you there? Send photos and video and share your story
The U.S. State Department says Lashkar-e-Tayyiba has several thousand members in the Pakistan-controlled part of Kashmir and calls it one of the three largest and best-trained groups fighting against India.
Kashmir, divided between India and Pakistan and claimed by both, has been wracked by an 18-year separatist campaign that authorities say has left at least 43,000 dead. Video Watch: Analyst says 'don't jump to conclusions' »
The counterterrorism official mentioned another group, Jaish-e-Mohammed, which is based in Pakistan and, like LeT, fights for the end of Indian rule in Kashmir. The use of fighters with handheld weapons and grenades against fixed targets would be the type of attack either group would be capable of conducting, the official said.
Don't Miss
* Mumbai toll climbs as hotel standoffs continue
* iReport.com: Are you there? Tell your story, send photos
* View all videos from Mumbai
* Special report: Attacks in Mumbai
What is different is the deliberate targeting of Westerners, the official said.
A senior U.S. official said, "our attention is focused on the sophistication of the execution of the attacks." Video Watch a witness describe the scene »
The sophistication was "to the extent it does not seem like Deccan Mujahideen could carry it off, so the question is, did they have outside help?" the source asked.
Both U.S. sources, meanwhile, said the attacks do not seem to point to al Qaeda, which usually launches mass-casualty attacks using vehicles or suicide vests and does not usually take hostages.
Another group being mentioned as a possible culprit is the Indian Mujahideen, a Muslim militant group that emerged about a year ago. Despite its relatively new status, the organization is thought to have the organizational capability to carry out such attacks, said Paul Cruickshank, a fellow at the Center on Law and Security at New York University's School of Law.
The group has declared "open war" against India in retaliation for what it said were 60 years of Muslim persecution and the country's support of U.S. policies.
In September, the group said it was behind a series of explosions that ripped through busy marketplaces in New Delhi, killing 24 people and wounding about 100. The group also claimed responsibility in May for near-simultaneous bomb attacks that killed 63 people in the northwest city of Jaipur.
Officially, the Indian government has said no one has claimed responsibility for this week's Mumbai attacks. The Deccan Mujahideen claims came in e-mails to several Indian media outlets.
Deccan refers to the Deccan Plateau, which makes up the majority of the southern part of the country. "Deccan" is an Anglicized form of "dakkhin," which means south. Read more on the international reaction
Mujahideen translates into "those engaged in the struggle for jihad." Although "jihad" in Islam can mean any endeavor that requires dedication, the term has taken on a militant tone in recent years.
Indian Prime Minister Manmohan Singh suggested in a television address that the attacks were launched by people from outside the country.
"It is evident that the group which carried out these attacks, based outside the country, had come with single-minded determination to create havoc in the financial capital of the country," Singh said.
Indian security experts agree that the attackers came from outside the country.
"What you're seeing is that these types of attacks are established. There's a network. There's well-planned reconnaissance and logistics and financial support. It could only be from a group that's receiving international support, obviously with a domestic dimension," terrorism expert Sajjan Gohel said.
"This time, there was a multipronged approach. It wasn't just about targeting Indians. It was an aim, but it wasn't the only one," Gohel said. "They also wanted to go after Westerners, as well. They wanted to create a lack of confidence in people traveling to India, hit at the economy, hit at the tourism industry."
Fingers have also been pointed toward Pakistan, India's neighbor. The two nations, both nuclear powers, have a tense relationship.
"It's everybody's right to say what they want to say, but as far as my country is concerned, we are already hit by this terrorism," Pakistani Prime Minister Yousuf Raza Gilani told CNN's Reza Sayah. Video Watch the Pakistani PM condemn the attacks »
"I think this is a heinous crime, and we condemn it," Gilani said. "And I think this terrorism is a menace for the whole world, and therefore we have to work jointly to combat terrorism and extremism."
Husain Haqqani, Pakistan's ambassador to the United States, released a statement saying that terrorism "is a threat to both India and Pakistan."
"Pakistan has vehemently condemned the terrorist attacks in Mumbai. It is unfair to blame Pakistan or Pakistanis for these acts of terrorism even before an investigation is undertaken," Haqqani's statement reads. "Instead of scoring political points at the expense of a neighboring country that is itself a victim of terrorism, it is time for India's leaders to work together with Pakistan's elected leaders in putting up a joint front against terrorism."
Guardian : Mumbai: Behind the attacks lies a story of youth twisted by hate
Saturday, November 29, 2008
Mumbai: Behind the attacks lies a story of youth twisted by hate
The intense poverty and extreme religious culture of the southern Punjab have made the region a hotbed for Islamist terror groups. It is, claim the Indian media, the seedbed of last week's slaughter in Mumbai. Jason Burke travelled to the twin towns of Bahawalpur and Multan, home of alleged killer Mohammad Ajmal Mohammad Amin Kasab, to discover what impels young men to unleash carnage
Jason Burke | November 30, 2008
The pitted roads around Multan, the city of saints, stretch flat across the fields. They lead past rundown factories, workshops, shabby roadside teashops and mile after mile of flat fields broken only by the mud and brick houses of the villages of Pakistan's rural poor. One road leads south-east to the nearby city of Bahawalpur, the biggest recruiting base of the militant groups currently being blamed by India for the Mumbai attack; another leads north-west to Faridkot, the home village of Mohammad Ajmal Mohammad Amin Kasab, a 21-year-old Pakistan national named yesterday in the Indian media as the only gunman involved in last week's atrocity now alive and in custody.
Already a picture claimed by the Indian media to be Kasab, showing a young man dressed in combat trousers, carrying a backpack and an AK47, on his way to to Mumbai's main station to carry out his deadly work, has become an iconic image of the assault on the city.
Two other militants have been named. Like Kasab, according to the Indian media reports, they are said to be from the Multan region, southern Punjab. They, too, are said to be members of the Pakistan-based militant group Lashkar-e-Taiba (Army of the Pure) and to have followed a five-month training period to prepare them for the attack. The charge of the group's involvement, denied by its spokesmen, has explosive political consequences for the volatile region and must be treated with caution. In the long-running contest between India and its neighbour, propaganda and misinformation is far from rare. But if the details now emerging are confirmed, the link to Pakistan may spark war.
For though it is widely acknowledged that Pakistan's civilian government has limited control over local militant groups, it is clear that Pakistan's military and security establishment does.
Lashkar-e-Taiba was originally founded with the support of the Pakistani military intelligence service, the ISI, to fight as 'deniable' proxies in the contested territory of Kashmir, part of a decades-old strategy by the militarily weaker Pakistan to 'bleed' its bigger rival. The ISI also has connections with Jaish-e-Mohammed, the second group that New Delhi security officials has accused of involvement in the Mumbai attacks.
For the moment little is known about the three men named yesterday or their accomplices. But their place of origin comes as no surprise to experts. Both Lashkar-e-Taiba and Jaish-e-Mohammed draw the majority of their recruits from the southern Punjab. Last week The Observer travelled to the twin towns of Multan and Bahawalpur, the centres of the region, to investigate the reality of the groups' power on the ground, their relations with the Pakistani intelligence services and the factors which drive young men, possibly including the Mumbai gunmen, to join them.
Trace a line from where US special forces battle Taliban fighters in the corner of empty desert where the Afghan, Pakistani and Iranian frontiers meet, follow it through the badlands of the Pakistani North West Frontier and on through the bomb-blasted cities of northern Pakistan and down through Delhi, attacked in September, to shell-shocked Mumbai, and one thing becomes clear: this zone has displaced the Middle East as the new central front in the struggle against Islamic militancy. The southern Punjab falls on the line's centre point. There may be doubt over the identity of the attackers, but there is none that Multan and Bahawalpur and villages such as Faridkot are in the Indians' sights.
For most militants in the region the story - and that of Azam Amir Kasab is unlikely to be very different - starts at school. The southern Punjab has one of the highest concentrations of religious schools or madrassas in south Asia. Most teach the ultra-conservative Deobandi strand of Islam that is also followed by the Afghan Taliban and, crucially in this desperately poor land, offers free classes, board and lodging to students.
In Bahawalpur the Jaish-e-Mohammed group, believed responsible for a string of brutal attacks across south Asia, including the murder of Jewish American journalist Daniel Pearl, has been linked to two such madrassas. One is the headquarters of the group - a semi-fortified and forbidding complex in the centre of the town. The other is the Dar-ul-Uloom Medina, where the brother-in-law of Rashid Rauf, the Bahawalpur-based suspected British militant thought to have been killed in an American missile attack eight days ago, is a teacher. Surrounded by some of the 700 students, he told The Observer that 'jihad' was the duty of all his young charges.
The pupils at the more radical Bahawalpur and Multan schools grow up soaked in extremist ideology. The most senior cleric in Bahawalpur, Maulana Riaz Chugti, said his students could only go 'for training or to fight' after their studies or when the schools were shut for the holy month of Ramadan.
'To fight in Afghanistan or Kashmir and to struggle against the forces who are against Islam is our religious duty,' Chugti, who oversees the education of 40,000 students, told The Observer.
In Bahawalpur both the effects and the limits of the recent reversal of policy by the ISI, the powerful Pakistani military intelligence service, are evident. A crackdown on the militant groups was launched after they were blamed for a bloody attack on the Indian parliament in 2001 which almost brought India and Pakistan to open war. The groups, previously seen as a strategic asset, were suddenly seen as, at least for the moment, a liability. When their operatives were linked to plots to assassinate the then President, and evidence of collusion with al-Qaeda itself became clear, the pressure mounted on the ISI to rein in their former protégés.
'The militants have had to lower their profile,' said one local security official. 'They are no longer recruiting or preaching or raising funds openly. Things are much more difficult for them. If they recruit at all they do it individual by individual, not en masse like before. There is no production line.'
But the groups - along with break-away outfits with their roots in sectarian Shia-Sunni violence in the region - still have a significant presence in the region, particularly in remote villages such as that of Azam Amir Kasab. 'They may be semi-retired, but in my village there are 300 men who have fought in Afghanistan and have training and can be activated with one phone call,' one local former militant said. That fighters for one operation should come from the same place was not surprising. 'When I went to Afghanistan I went with five guys who I knew from school,' he said.
The young men of the southern Punjab have been found across a broad swath of south Asia and even further afield. In Kabul in August, The Observer interviewed Abit, a 23-year-old from Bahawalpur who had surrendered to Afghan police seconds before he was supposed to blow himself up in a huge truck bomb. Other militants from the town have been found as far away as Bangladesh. Lashkar-e-Taiba members have even been located in Iraq.
The groups are also of great interest to British intelligence services, who fear their key role as intermediaries between young volunteers from the UK's Muslim community - such as Rauf - and al-Qaeda leaders based in the volatile tribal zones along Pakistan's western frontier. The groups, the sources say, have a UK support network to supply funding.
The groups' relationship with the intelligence services is complex. Front organisations for the groups have even put up candidates in recent elections and travel without fear throughout Pakistan. Earlier this year The Observer interviewed a representative of one group alleged to be linked to Lashkar-e-Taiba in the foyer of a luxury Lahore hotel.
Local politicians said groups in the region were still powerful enough to intimidate the local government and security forces and even to collect tax or mediate in legal disputes in some areas. Roshan Gilani, a Shia community leader in Bahawalpur, said music shops had received Taliban-style threats, telling them to close or risk violence. Prominent Shias have been told they are on a hit list.
Until the Mumbai attacks, the recent series of bombings in India had been attributed by most analysts to a home-grown militant outfit: the Indian Mujahideen. With many highly educated and middle-class recruits among its ranks, and led by a 36-year-old computer engineer, the group's members have a very different profile from the Pakistani groups' recruits. But though their paths may be very different, the militants' eventual destination - fanaticism, violence and hate - are the same.
Intelligence agencies have done much research since 9/11 into how individuals become terrorist killers. Dehumanising the enemy is seen as key. Civilians are no longer seen as innocent but as complicit in a war waged by their governments against Islam. Group dynamics also play a huge role, particularly when teams of militants are isolated from normal society for long periods of time. Training camps - such as those in which Azam Amir Kasab is said to have spent months - are the perfect way of reinforcing solidarity and the new 'world view' which will allow them to execute murderous operations, such as killing diners in a hotel restaurant in cold blood.
Indian authorities believe local members of the Indian Mujahideen may have acted as scouts to prepare the ground and gather intelligence before the attack. Security services now recognise that militant groups looking to prepare attacks seek out resources and often enter into temporary coalitions with other outfits when necessary. Though criminal links to Islamic militants are rare, they are not unknown, and there are some suggestions that local underworld networks may have been exploited to get the attackers to the targets by sea.
India's terror groups
Lashkar-e-Taiba (Army of the Pure)
Battling to end Indian rule in Kashmir, this Pakistan-based group is routinely blamed by Indian security forces for attacks. The surviving gunman arrested in Mumbai is said to be a member.
Maoists, also known as Naxalites
Prime Minister Manmohan Singh has said the Maoists are the most serious threat to national security. Their battles with police cause a steady death toll.
Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam
The violence caused by this Sri Lanka-based separatist group spilled into India in 1991 when a suicide bomber killed Prime Minister Rajiv Gandhi.
Sikh separatists
President Indira Gandhi's Sikh bodyguards shot her in 1984 in revenge for the hundreds killed when the military, aiming to suppress separatist militants, stormed a temple in Amritsar. Riots followed.
Students Islamic Movement of India
An Islamist fundamentalist organisation. Indian police suspect involvement in the attack on Jaipur this summer.
United Liberation Front of Asom
Formed in 1979 to establish a 'socialist Assam' through armed struggle. One of many such groups in north-east India.
The intense poverty and extreme religious culture of the southern Punjab have made the region a hotbed for Islamist terror groups. It is, claim the Indian media, the seedbed of last week's slaughter in Mumbai. Jason Burke travelled to the twin towns of Bahawalpur and Multan, home of alleged killer Mohammad Ajmal Mohammad Amin Kasab, to discover what impels young men to unleash carnage
Jason Burke | November 30, 2008
The pitted roads around Multan, the city of saints, stretch flat across the fields. They lead past rundown factories, workshops, shabby roadside teashops and mile after mile of flat fields broken only by the mud and brick houses of the villages of Pakistan's rural poor. One road leads south-east to the nearby city of Bahawalpur, the biggest recruiting base of the militant groups currently being blamed by India for the Mumbai attack; another leads north-west to Faridkot, the home village of Mohammad Ajmal Mohammad Amin Kasab, a 21-year-old Pakistan national named yesterday in the Indian media as the only gunman involved in last week's atrocity now alive and in custody.
Already a picture claimed by the Indian media to be Kasab, showing a young man dressed in combat trousers, carrying a backpack and an AK47, on his way to to Mumbai's main station to carry out his deadly work, has become an iconic image of the assault on the city.
Two other militants have been named. Like Kasab, according to the Indian media reports, they are said to be from the Multan region, southern Punjab. They, too, are said to be members of the Pakistan-based militant group Lashkar-e-Taiba (Army of the Pure) and to have followed a five-month training period to prepare them for the attack. The charge of the group's involvement, denied by its spokesmen, has explosive political consequences for the volatile region and must be treated with caution. In the long-running contest between India and its neighbour, propaganda and misinformation is far from rare. But if the details now emerging are confirmed, the link to Pakistan may spark war.
For though it is widely acknowledged that Pakistan's civilian government has limited control over local militant groups, it is clear that Pakistan's military and security establishment does.
Lashkar-e-Taiba was originally founded with the support of the Pakistani military intelligence service, the ISI, to fight as 'deniable' proxies in the contested territory of Kashmir, part of a decades-old strategy by the militarily weaker Pakistan to 'bleed' its bigger rival. The ISI also has connections with Jaish-e-Mohammed, the second group that New Delhi security officials has accused of involvement in the Mumbai attacks.
For the moment little is known about the three men named yesterday or their accomplices. But their place of origin comes as no surprise to experts. Both Lashkar-e-Taiba and Jaish-e-Mohammed draw the majority of their recruits from the southern Punjab. Last week The Observer travelled to the twin towns of Multan and Bahawalpur, the centres of the region, to investigate the reality of the groups' power on the ground, their relations with the Pakistani intelligence services and the factors which drive young men, possibly including the Mumbai gunmen, to join them.
Trace a line from where US special forces battle Taliban fighters in the corner of empty desert where the Afghan, Pakistani and Iranian frontiers meet, follow it through the badlands of the Pakistani North West Frontier and on through the bomb-blasted cities of northern Pakistan and down through Delhi, attacked in September, to shell-shocked Mumbai, and one thing becomes clear: this zone has displaced the Middle East as the new central front in the struggle against Islamic militancy. The southern Punjab falls on the line's centre point. There may be doubt over the identity of the attackers, but there is none that Multan and Bahawalpur and villages such as Faridkot are in the Indians' sights.
For most militants in the region the story - and that of Azam Amir Kasab is unlikely to be very different - starts at school. The southern Punjab has one of the highest concentrations of religious schools or madrassas in south Asia. Most teach the ultra-conservative Deobandi strand of Islam that is also followed by the Afghan Taliban and, crucially in this desperately poor land, offers free classes, board and lodging to students.
In Bahawalpur the Jaish-e-Mohammed group, believed responsible for a string of brutal attacks across south Asia, including the murder of Jewish American journalist Daniel Pearl, has been linked to two such madrassas. One is the headquarters of the group - a semi-fortified and forbidding complex in the centre of the town. The other is the Dar-ul-Uloom Medina, where the brother-in-law of Rashid Rauf, the Bahawalpur-based suspected British militant thought to have been killed in an American missile attack eight days ago, is a teacher. Surrounded by some of the 700 students, he told The Observer that 'jihad' was the duty of all his young charges.
The pupils at the more radical Bahawalpur and Multan schools grow up soaked in extremist ideology. The most senior cleric in Bahawalpur, Maulana Riaz Chugti, said his students could only go 'for training or to fight' after their studies or when the schools were shut for the holy month of Ramadan.
'To fight in Afghanistan or Kashmir and to struggle against the forces who are against Islam is our religious duty,' Chugti, who oversees the education of 40,000 students, told The Observer.
In Bahawalpur both the effects and the limits of the recent reversal of policy by the ISI, the powerful Pakistani military intelligence service, are evident. A crackdown on the militant groups was launched after they were blamed for a bloody attack on the Indian parliament in 2001 which almost brought India and Pakistan to open war. The groups, previously seen as a strategic asset, were suddenly seen as, at least for the moment, a liability. When their operatives were linked to plots to assassinate the then President, and evidence of collusion with al-Qaeda itself became clear, the pressure mounted on the ISI to rein in their former protégés.
'The militants have had to lower their profile,' said one local security official. 'They are no longer recruiting or preaching or raising funds openly. Things are much more difficult for them. If they recruit at all they do it individual by individual, not en masse like before. There is no production line.'
But the groups - along with break-away outfits with their roots in sectarian Shia-Sunni violence in the region - still have a significant presence in the region, particularly in remote villages such as that of Azam Amir Kasab. 'They may be semi-retired, but in my village there are 300 men who have fought in Afghanistan and have training and can be activated with one phone call,' one local former militant said. That fighters for one operation should come from the same place was not surprising. 'When I went to Afghanistan I went with five guys who I knew from school,' he said.
The young men of the southern Punjab have been found across a broad swath of south Asia and even further afield. In Kabul in August, The Observer interviewed Abit, a 23-year-old from Bahawalpur who had surrendered to Afghan police seconds before he was supposed to blow himself up in a huge truck bomb. Other militants from the town have been found as far away as Bangladesh. Lashkar-e-Taiba members have even been located in Iraq.
The groups are also of great interest to British intelligence services, who fear their key role as intermediaries between young volunteers from the UK's Muslim community - such as Rauf - and al-Qaeda leaders based in the volatile tribal zones along Pakistan's western frontier. The groups, the sources say, have a UK support network to supply funding.
The groups' relationship with the intelligence services is complex. Front organisations for the groups have even put up candidates in recent elections and travel without fear throughout Pakistan. Earlier this year The Observer interviewed a representative of one group alleged to be linked to Lashkar-e-Taiba in the foyer of a luxury Lahore hotel.
Local politicians said groups in the region were still powerful enough to intimidate the local government and security forces and even to collect tax or mediate in legal disputes in some areas. Roshan Gilani, a Shia community leader in Bahawalpur, said music shops had received Taliban-style threats, telling them to close or risk violence. Prominent Shias have been told they are on a hit list.
Until the Mumbai attacks, the recent series of bombings in India had been attributed by most analysts to a home-grown militant outfit: the Indian Mujahideen. With many highly educated and middle-class recruits among its ranks, and led by a 36-year-old computer engineer, the group's members have a very different profile from the Pakistani groups' recruits. But though their paths may be very different, the militants' eventual destination - fanaticism, violence and hate - are the same.
Intelligence agencies have done much research since 9/11 into how individuals become terrorist killers. Dehumanising the enemy is seen as key. Civilians are no longer seen as innocent but as complicit in a war waged by their governments against Islam. Group dynamics also play a huge role, particularly when teams of militants are isolated from normal society for long periods of time. Training camps - such as those in which Azam Amir Kasab is said to have spent months - are the perfect way of reinforcing solidarity and the new 'world view' which will allow them to execute murderous operations, such as killing diners in a hotel restaurant in cold blood.
Indian authorities believe local members of the Indian Mujahideen may have acted as scouts to prepare the ground and gather intelligence before the attack. Security services now recognise that militant groups looking to prepare attacks seek out resources and often enter into temporary coalitions with other outfits when necessary. Though criminal links to Islamic militants are rare, they are not unknown, and there are some suggestions that local underworld networks may have been exploited to get the attackers to the targets by sea.
India's terror groups
Lashkar-e-Taiba (Army of the Pure)
Battling to end Indian rule in Kashmir, this Pakistan-based group is routinely blamed by Indian security forces for attacks. The surviving gunman arrested in Mumbai is said to be a member.
Maoists, also known as Naxalites
Prime Minister Manmohan Singh has said the Maoists are the most serious threat to national security. Their battles with police cause a steady death toll.
Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam
The violence caused by this Sri Lanka-based separatist group spilled into India in 1991 when a suicide bomber killed Prime Minister Rajiv Gandhi.
Sikh separatists
President Indira Gandhi's Sikh bodyguards shot her in 1984 in revenge for the hundreds killed when the military, aiming to suppress separatist militants, stormed a temple in Amritsar. Riots followed.
Students Islamic Movement of India
An Islamist fundamentalist organisation. Indian police suspect involvement in the attack on Jaipur this summer.
United Liberation Front of Asom
Formed in 1979 to establish a 'socialist Assam' through armed struggle. One of many such groups in north-east India.
Daily Express : Butchers Of Mumbai Are Brits
Friday, November 28, 2008
BUTCHERS OF MUMBAI ARE BRITS
By Paul Jeeves, John Twomey and Cyril Dixon | November 29, 2008
Anti-terror police were last night investigating a “British connection” with the Mumbai fanatics.
They were examining links between Britain’s Islamic community and the killers who slaughtered at least 160 victims.
Highly-placed sources in India claimed that at least seven of the killers, who caused carnage in India’s commercial centre, had strong British connections.
Two of them were said to come from Leeds, as did two of the four London July 7 bombers.
Another of the gunmen – all believed to be from Pakistani backgrounds – was alleged to have links to Bradford in West Yorkshire and a fourth to Hartlepool on Teesside. Investigations are also underway in Dewsbury, Yorkshire.
Although there was no official confirmation of the links, counter-terrorism officers were last night understood to be active across the North.
The clearest evidence of British involvement came from Indian Chief Minister Vilasrao Deshmukh, who said that two British-born Pakistanis were among eight arrested.
Last night one of the Indian commandos involved in the gun battles said they had seized at least five BlackBerry devices which the Islamic extremists had used to access British news websites, including live TV streams.
A senior officer in the country’s elite Black Cat commando unit said the devices meant that the terrorists could keep abreast of developments outside their boltholes even when power supplies to the hotels they were attacking were cut off.
“There was a lot of content from the English media, not just in London but the Urdu and Arabic sites that are very strong in the North of England,” he said. “We have some analysis started on this and we will pass it on to Scotland Yard.”
A senior security source said: “The situation is far from clear, but you cannot rule out the possibility that a number of young men from home-grown communities are mixed up.”
A police source said: “We are probing the underbelly of religious extremism but are having to tread extremely carefully. The fallout of 7/7 is still rife among these communities and there is a real reluctance to co-operate.
“It is a fast-moving situation in India, but we have to be on top of things as they emerge and cannot rule out any links to the UK.” The source added: “The camps in Pakistan are full and many of the people inside are Britons.”
The source suggested that the attack could have been revenge for the killing of Rashid Rauf, a British Al Qaeda chief blown up by the US last week.
Some sources speculated that Rauf, the son of a baker, may even have helped to plan the mounting of outrages similar to the Mumbai massacre.
Birmingham-born Rauf, said to have been linked to an alleged plot to set off bombs on packed transatlantic planes, died in a missile attack.
A leading British expert on terrorism also suggested that coverage of the Mumbai atrocity was creating a new phenomenon – celebrity terrorism.
“What the Mumbai terrorists really wanted was an exaggerated and preferably extreme reaction on the part of governments, the media and public opinion,” said Paul Cornish, head of Chatham House think-tank.
“In these terms, the attackers received as much attention as they could possibly have hoped for, and the Mumbai outrage can only be described as a very significant terrorist success. Welcome to the age of celebrity terrorism.”
Foreign Secretary David Miliband and Prime Minister Gordon Brown both said it was too early to confirm whether the gunmen in Mumbai were British – but added that the possibility was being investigated.
The British Al Qaeda connection was exposed on July 7 2005 when four Muslim fanatics killed 52 innocent people in suicide bomb attacks on the London transport network.
Ringleader Mohammad Sidique Khan came from Dewsbury and had recruited his cohorts in West Yorkshire mosques.
The 31-year-old teaching assistant brainwashed British-born Hasib Hussain, 18, and Shehzad Tanweer, 22, both from Leeds, and Jamaican-born Germaine Lindsay, 19, from Aylesbury, Bucks, to join him.
British anti-terror police are now running photographs and film footage of the estimated 25 Mumbai gunmen and potential suspects through the latest image-recognition computers.
A spokesman for Counter-Terrorism North confirmed their involvement in investigating possible links.
But he stressed: “At this stage, we are not in receipt of any intelligence or information linking the events in India to our area.”
The two Britons believed to have been arrested were seized after commandos stormed two five-star hotels and a Jewish centre in attempts to free hostages.
By Paul Jeeves, John Twomey and Cyril Dixon | November 29, 2008
Anti-terror police were last night investigating a “British connection” with the Mumbai fanatics.
They were examining links between Britain’s Islamic community and the killers who slaughtered at least 160 victims.
Highly-placed sources in India claimed that at least seven of the killers, who caused carnage in India’s commercial centre, had strong British connections.
Two of them were said to come from Leeds, as did two of the four London July 7 bombers.
Another of the gunmen – all believed to be from Pakistani backgrounds – was alleged to have links to Bradford in West Yorkshire and a fourth to Hartlepool on Teesside. Investigations are also underway in Dewsbury, Yorkshire.
Although there was no official confirmation of the links, counter-terrorism officers were last night understood to be active across the North.
The clearest evidence of British involvement came from Indian Chief Minister Vilasrao Deshmukh, who said that two British-born Pakistanis were among eight arrested.
Last night one of the Indian commandos involved in the gun battles said they had seized at least five BlackBerry devices which the Islamic extremists had used to access British news websites, including live TV streams.
A senior officer in the country’s elite Black Cat commando unit said the devices meant that the terrorists could keep abreast of developments outside their boltholes even when power supplies to the hotels they were attacking were cut off.
“There was a lot of content from the English media, not just in London but the Urdu and Arabic sites that are very strong in the North of England,” he said. “We have some analysis started on this and we will pass it on to Scotland Yard.”
A senior security source said: “The situation is far from clear, but you cannot rule out the possibility that a number of young men from home-grown communities are mixed up.”
A police source said: “We are probing the underbelly of religious extremism but are having to tread extremely carefully. The fallout of 7/7 is still rife among these communities and there is a real reluctance to co-operate.
“It is a fast-moving situation in India, but we have to be on top of things as they emerge and cannot rule out any links to the UK.” The source added: “The camps in Pakistan are full and many of the people inside are Britons.”
The source suggested that the attack could have been revenge for the killing of Rashid Rauf, a British Al Qaeda chief blown up by the US last week.
Some sources speculated that Rauf, the son of a baker, may even have helped to plan the mounting of outrages similar to the Mumbai massacre.
Birmingham-born Rauf, said to have been linked to an alleged plot to set off bombs on packed transatlantic planes, died in a missile attack.
A leading British expert on terrorism also suggested that coverage of the Mumbai atrocity was creating a new phenomenon – celebrity terrorism.
“What the Mumbai terrorists really wanted was an exaggerated and preferably extreme reaction on the part of governments, the media and public opinion,” said Paul Cornish, head of Chatham House think-tank.
“In these terms, the attackers received as much attention as they could possibly have hoped for, and the Mumbai outrage can only be described as a very significant terrorist success. Welcome to the age of celebrity terrorism.”
Foreign Secretary David Miliband and Prime Minister Gordon Brown both said it was too early to confirm whether the gunmen in Mumbai were British – but added that the possibility was being investigated.
The British Al Qaeda connection was exposed on July 7 2005 when four Muslim fanatics killed 52 innocent people in suicide bomb attacks on the London transport network.
Ringleader Mohammad Sidique Khan came from Dewsbury and had recruited his cohorts in West Yorkshire mosques.
The 31-year-old teaching assistant brainwashed British-born Hasib Hussain, 18, and Shehzad Tanweer, 22, both from Leeds, and Jamaican-born Germaine Lindsay, 19, from Aylesbury, Bucks, to join him.
British anti-terror police are now running photographs and film footage of the estimated 25 Mumbai gunmen and potential suspects through the latest image-recognition computers.
A spokesman for Counter-Terrorism North confirmed their involvement in investigating possible links.
But he stressed: “At this stage, we are not in receipt of any intelligence or information linking the events in India to our area.”
The two Britons believed to have been arrested were seized after commandos stormed two five-star hotels and a Jewish centre in attempts to free hostages.
Filed under
Mumbai attacks,
Rashid Rauf
by Winter Patriot
on Friday, November 28, 2008
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Boston Globe : Indian forces assault center held by militants
Friday, November 28, 2008
Indian forces assault center held by militants
Death toll in Mumbai attacks rises to 125
By Mark Magnier and Sebastian Rotella, Los Angeles Times | November 28, 2008
MUMBAI, India - Indian security forces assaulted a Jewish center in Mumbai where Muslim militants were believed holed up with possible hostages early today, after a chaotic day of gunfire and explosions in which the toll in coordinated terrorist attacks rose to 125 dead.
Commandos dropped from a helicopter as sharpshooters opened fire on the five-story headquarters of the Jewish outreach group Chabad Lubavitch. Six trucks of soldiers had been brought in to surround the building.
The attack occurred as Indian forces rooted through two smoldering luxury hotels here this morning, searching for survivors, the dead, and the last of the gunmen whose choreographed rampage of terror through this cosmopolitan city spawned a mystery about their identities and motive.
Snipers stationed in buildings opposite the Chabad center began the attack there, with sustained fire on the building as at least nine commandos lowered themselves by rope onto the roof from an Indian Air Force helicopter. The outcome of the firefight was not immediately clear.
By midmorning today, officials estimated that possibly 10 militants remained at large - one in the Taj Mahal Palace and Tower hotel and four others in the Oberoi hotel, with another five holed up in the Jewish center.
They said 15 hotel guests, mostly foreigners, remained trapped inside a 21-floor wing of the Oberoi.
Ten hostages believed to be Israeli citizens were being held at the Jewish center, in Nariman House, where Indian security forces launched a counterattack as the city awoke.
"We watched 24 commandoes surround the building," said Bharat Phulsunge, a 28-year-old insurance agent. "We can hear gunfire and explosions from inside. It's still very tense." Earlier yesterday, two workers and a child escaped from the building, the only people to emerge so far. The child was identified as Moshe Holtzberg, 2, the son of Rabbi Gavriel Noach Holtzberg, a New York native and the main representative at Chabad House. The child was unharmed, but his clothes were soaked in blood.
More than 325 people were injured in Wednesday's terrorist attacks, according to official reports. The injured included three Americans. Eight foreigners were among the dead.
Indian military commandos continued to exchange fire with an unknown number of militants yesterday as the drama unfolded, one day after gunmen pounced on India's financial capital, storming several public places, including the Jewish center, a train station, and hospitals.
Nine suspects reportedly were in custody.
The attacks apparently targeted American, Israeli, and British citizens for use as hostages, the officials said. The dead included at least one Australian, a Japanese, and a British national. A dozen police officers also were slain, including the leader of Mumbai's antiterrorist unit.
Throughout the day, commandos brought hostages, trapped guests, and bodies out of the hotels in small groups while firefighters battled blazes that erupted periodically. US officials in India checked with local authorities and hospitals to learn the extent of the casualties involving Americans.
More than 400 people were brought out of the Taj Mahal hotel. Authorities said they had killed three gunmen at the hotel. It remained unclear how many dead lay uncounted.
A solemn Prime Minister Manmohan Singh addressed the nation by television yesterday evening, pledging that the militants "would not succeed in their nefarious design." Singh asserted that the group behind the attacks "was based outside the country," and warned India's neighbors "that the use of their territory for launching attacks on us will not be tolerated."
After past terrorist attacks, Indian leaders have pointed the finger at Pakistani Islamic extremists or intelligence operatives, two forces that often team up for operations in South Asia. Pakistan's defense minister condemned the Mumbai attacks yesterday and warned India to refrain from blaming Pakistan, a longtime rival.
President Bush telephoned Singh to express his condolences and offer assistance to India as it works "to restore order, provide safety to its people and comfort to the victims and their families, and investigate these despicable acts," according to a White House spokeswoman.
President-elect Barack Obama's transition team issued a statement condemning the attacks.
The violence began Wednesday evening as militants invaded the Taj Mahal and the Oberoi, two luxury hotels favored by foreigners. They fired automatic weapons and threw grenades, sending panicked guests scrambling for safety and trapping others inside the hotels.
Several witnesses said the gunmen demanded to see passports from cornered guests, separating American and British tourists from the others.
The victims included Mumbai's antiterrorism chief, Hemant Karkare, and two of his senior police officers, which complicated the law enforcement response to the attacks. Television video showed Karkare donning a flak jacket and helmet minutes before heading into one of the hotels.
Witnesses said the attackers appeared to fire at random and made no effort to hide their identities, which, analysts suggested, signaled a readiness to die.
Local government officials said as many as four attackers were killed and nine suspects were arrested.
Throughout yesterday, a series of explosions and fires continued to rage at the Taj Majal Palace. Late in the afternoon, military officials said most of the hostages there had been freed, adding that some guests might be in their rooms, fearful of emerging amid gunfire.
Soon after dark, numerous Indian commandos emerged from the hotel with guns pointed down, leading observers to surmise that the standoff was over.
Officials said the commandos seized a small arsenal of weapons that included hand grenades, tear gas pistols, knives, and more than 80 magazines of ammunition. Also confiscated were several credit cards with the names and pictures of suspected militants, officials said.
But the Oberoi remained a battle zone late into the day.
M.L. Kumawat, an Indian Home Ministry official, said many of the 21 floors of the Oberoi had been cleared by security agencies, but others were considered dangerous.
Hours after nightfall, another fire erupted at the Oberoi, this time on the 19th floor, witnesses said, and several people were believed trapped by flames.
A previously unknown group calling itself Deccan Mujahedeen on Wednesday said it carried out the attacks, but officials were unclear whether the claim was true. Throughout yesterday, Indian media speculated on how the nation's intelligence network could have been unaware of the organization.
One report indicated that the militants might have come ashore after dark Wednesday. One fisherman told authorities he saw three boats land on the beach.
When a bystander asked one of the men who they were, he reportedly responded, "We're military, just shut up," the witness said.
Most of Mumbai remained in shock yesterday. In many neighborhoods, 80 percent of the businesses remained closed; police warned residents to stay home, where many followed the unfolding drama on television.
Some people referred to the attacks as "India's 9/11," comparing the targeting of India's business elite and foreign investors to the 2001 attacks in the United States. Mumbai is South Asia's financial hub and an entertainment capital, and many of the glitzy targets symbolize the new cosmopolitan face of the world's largest democracy.
Once known as Bombay, the city is home to India's commodities and stock exchanges, which remained closed yesterday.
Although Mumbai has been the scene of several terrorist attacks in recent years, analysts said Wednesday's assaults required a previously unseen degree of reconnaissance and planning.
The scale and synchronization of the attacks pointed to the probable involvement of experienced commanders, some observers said, suggesting possible foreign involvement.
Material from the Associated Press was included in this report.
Death toll in Mumbai attacks rises to 125
By Mark Magnier and Sebastian Rotella, Los Angeles Times | November 28, 2008
MUMBAI, India - Indian security forces assaulted a Jewish center in Mumbai where Muslim militants were believed holed up with possible hostages early today, after a chaotic day of gunfire and explosions in which the toll in coordinated terrorist attacks rose to 125 dead.
Commandos dropped from a helicopter as sharpshooters opened fire on the five-story headquarters of the Jewish outreach group Chabad Lubavitch. Six trucks of soldiers had been brought in to surround the building.
The attack occurred as Indian forces rooted through two smoldering luxury hotels here this morning, searching for survivors, the dead, and the last of the gunmen whose choreographed rampage of terror through this cosmopolitan city spawned a mystery about their identities and motive.
Snipers stationed in buildings opposite the Chabad center began the attack there, with sustained fire on the building as at least nine commandos lowered themselves by rope onto the roof from an Indian Air Force helicopter. The outcome of the firefight was not immediately clear.
By midmorning today, officials estimated that possibly 10 militants remained at large - one in the Taj Mahal Palace and Tower hotel and four others in the Oberoi hotel, with another five holed up in the Jewish center.
They said 15 hotel guests, mostly foreigners, remained trapped inside a 21-floor wing of the Oberoi.
Ten hostages believed to be Israeli citizens were being held at the Jewish center, in Nariman House, where Indian security forces launched a counterattack as the city awoke.
"We watched 24 commandoes surround the building," said Bharat Phulsunge, a 28-year-old insurance agent. "We can hear gunfire and explosions from inside. It's still very tense." Earlier yesterday, two workers and a child escaped from the building, the only people to emerge so far. The child was identified as Moshe Holtzberg, 2, the son of Rabbi Gavriel Noach Holtzberg, a New York native and the main representative at Chabad House. The child was unharmed, but his clothes were soaked in blood.
More than 325 people were injured in Wednesday's terrorist attacks, according to official reports. The injured included three Americans. Eight foreigners were among the dead.
Indian military commandos continued to exchange fire with an unknown number of militants yesterday as the drama unfolded, one day after gunmen pounced on India's financial capital, storming several public places, including the Jewish center, a train station, and hospitals.
Nine suspects reportedly were in custody.
The attacks apparently targeted American, Israeli, and British citizens for use as hostages, the officials said. The dead included at least one Australian, a Japanese, and a British national. A dozen police officers also were slain, including the leader of Mumbai's antiterrorist unit.
Throughout the day, commandos brought hostages, trapped guests, and bodies out of the hotels in small groups while firefighters battled blazes that erupted periodically. US officials in India checked with local authorities and hospitals to learn the extent of the casualties involving Americans.
More than 400 people were brought out of the Taj Mahal hotel. Authorities said they had killed three gunmen at the hotel. It remained unclear how many dead lay uncounted.
A solemn Prime Minister Manmohan Singh addressed the nation by television yesterday evening, pledging that the militants "would not succeed in their nefarious design." Singh asserted that the group behind the attacks "was based outside the country," and warned India's neighbors "that the use of their territory for launching attacks on us will not be tolerated."
After past terrorist attacks, Indian leaders have pointed the finger at Pakistani Islamic extremists or intelligence operatives, two forces that often team up for operations in South Asia. Pakistan's defense minister condemned the Mumbai attacks yesterday and warned India to refrain from blaming Pakistan, a longtime rival.
President Bush telephoned Singh to express his condolences and offer assistance to India as it works "to restore order, provide safety to its people and comfort to the victims and their families, and investigate these despicable acts," according to a White House spokeswoman.
President-elect Barack Obama's transition team issued a statement condemning the attacks.
The violence began Wednesday evening as militants invaded the Taj Mahal and the Oberoi, two luxury hotels favored by foreigners. They fired automatic weapons and threw grenades, sending panicked guests scrambling for safety and trapping others inside the hotels.
Several witnesses said the gunmen demanded to see passports from cornered guests, separating American and British tourists from the others.
The victims included Mumbai's antiterrorism chief, Hemant Karkare, and two of his senior police officers, which complicated the law enforcement response to the attacks. Television video showed Karkare donning a flak jacket and helmet minutes before heading into one of the hotels.
Witnesses said the attackers appeared to fire at random and made no effort to hide their identities, which, analysts suggested, signaled a readiness to die.
Local government officials said as many as four attackers were killed and nine suspects were arrested.
Throughout yesterday, a series of explosions and fires continued to rage at the Taj Majal Palace. Late in the afternoon, military officials said most of the hostages there had been freed, adding that some guests might be in their rooms, fearful of emerging amid gunfire.
Soon after dark, numerous Indian commandos emerged from the hotel with guns pointed down, leading observers to surmise that the standoff was over.
Officials said the commandos seized a small arsenal of weapons that included hand grenades, tear gas pistols, knives, and more than 80 magazines of ammunition. Also confiscated were several credit cards with the names and pictures of suspected militants, officials said.
But the Oberoi remained a battle zone late into the day.
M.L. Kumawat, an Indian Home Ministry official, said many of the 21 floors of the Oberoi had been cleared by security agencies, but others were considered dangerous.
Hours after nightfall, another fire erupted at the Oberoi, this time on the 19th floor, witnesses said, and several people were believed trapped by flames.
A previously unknown group calling itself Deccan Mujahedeen on Wednesday said it carried out the attacks, but officials were unclear whether the claim was true. Throughout yesterday, Indian media speculated on how the nation's intelligence network could have been unaware of the organization.
One report indicated that the militants might have come ashore after dark Wednesday. One fisherman told authorities he saw three boats land on the beach.
When a bystander asked one of the men who they were, he reportedly responded, "We're military, just shut up," the witness said.
Most of Mumbai remained in shock yesterday. In many neighborhoods, 80 percent of the businesses remained closed; police warned residents to stay home, where many followed the unfolding drama on television.
Some people referred to the attacks as "India's 9/11," comparing the targeting of India's business elite and foreign investors to the 2001 attacks in the United States. Mumbai is South Asia's financial hub and an entertainment capital, and many of the glitzy targets symbolize the new cosmopolitan face of the world's largest democracy.
Once known as Bombay, the city is home to India's commodities and stock exchanges, which remained closed yesterday.
Although Mumbai has been the scene of several terrorist attacks in recent years, analysts said Wednesday's assaults required a previously unseen degree of reconnaissance and planning.
The scale and synchronization of the attacks pointed to the probable involvement of experienced commanders, some observers said, suggesting possible foreign involvement.
Material from the Associated Press was included in this report.
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