TIME : Belgian Police Break Up Plot Linked to al-Qaeda

Belgian Police Break Up Plot Linked to al-Qaeda

By Bruce Crumley | December 11, 2008

A planned terror strike in Europe that Belgian police claim to have foiled on Thursday was linked to al-Qaeda, authorities say. Some of the 14 suspects arrested had recently traveled to Pakistan and Afghanistan, officials said, and had planned to launch a suicide strike — although the target remains unknown. "When you have people returning from Afghanistan, as most of these people had, they're sufficiently hard-core that the question isn't whether they'll be undertaking plotting activity but when, and in what form," said a European counterterrorism official with knowledge of the case. "What's important for us to learn is, if the Taliban or their al-Qaeda allies decide to strike us today, who are they going to do it with: their old European networks, [or] via Pakistani groups, jihadist organizations in North Africa or maybe other operatives? The situation evolves constantly, and we've got to keep up with it."

Thursday's raids were carried out in Brussels and the eastern city of Liege, where police confiscated computers, hard drives and at least one gun. Though Belgian authorities say they have no firm idea of exactly how, when or where an attack was to have been carried out, they decided to move on the group after learning that one member had recorded a farewell video to his family. "We don't know who the suicide bomber was targeting, but we know he was ready to go," says Lieve Pellens, spokeswoman for the Belgian Public Prosecutor. "He had said his goodbyes."

The arrest of the network — which had been monitored by 80 police and antiterrorism officers working full-time since the start of the year, according to Pellens — came just hours before leaders of the European Union were set to open a two-day summit in the Belgian capital. That meeting doesn't appear to have been a target of a plot whose details authorities say remain hazy. Still, Belgian officials said the decision to seize the group had become urgent to prevent the designated suicide bomber from possibly launching an attack before police could discover the target and stop him.

Still, some experts wonder whether the arrests were premature, given the lack of information on the plot. "Could more evidence have been obtained? Might a full plot with targets and the weapons of attack have materialized if more time had been taken to just sit, watch and listen?" asked the European counterterrorism official. "Was everyone [in this network] under watch back from Afghanistan and [are they all] now under arrest? If not, that's a problem."

That question reflects the resurgence of Pakistan and Afghanistan as prime destinations for aspiring Europe-based jihadists in search of training. Following the ouster of the Taliban and the scattering of al-Qaeda from Afghanistan in 2001, Iraq became the theater of choice for the volunteer jihadist, like 38-year-old Belgian convert Muriel Degauque, who blew herself up in an attack on U.S. troops north of Baghdad in November 2005.

"Now we're seeing growing numbers of European extremists turning up in the Afghan-Pakistan region again — often aided by networks created specially to help them get there," confides a French intelligence official. "This isn't a return to the pre–Sept. 11 situation, but it's certainly the closest to it we've seen since the fall of the Taliban."

Some of those arrested in Belgium connect with earlier episodes of al-Qaeda violence. First among them is Malika El Aroud, a 48-year-old Belgian national whose Tunisian husband Abdessater Dahmane was one of two men recruited from Belgian extremist networks to assassinate Afghanistan's key anti-Taliban commander, Ahmed Shah Massoud, two days before 9/11. Since then, blogging under the pseudonym Oum Obeyda, El Aroud has been a fiery advocate for the jihadist cause, urging Muslim men and women to take up the fight.

Having become a conspicuous figure to which like-minded radicals tend to flock has made El Aroud of particular interest to investigators. In December she was among several people arrested, but eventually released, on suspicion that they were planning to break a convicted jihadist out of prison. If her visibility turns out to have aided Belgian cops in breaking up a jihadist plot, El Aroud's vocal radicalism may prompt future plotters to avoid her like the plague.

"She is extreme in her beliefs and her expression of them, which makes a lot of things she says and those who rush to echo them on radical websites somewhat transparent," says the European official, who declined to say whether such web communications were part of what led to Thursday's arrests. "This group she's been arrested with were real in their intent. The big question now is, Will we learn everything about it and its direction that we could have?"

— With reporting by Leo Cendrowicz / Brussels

Guardian : 14 al-Qaida suspects held as Europe's leaders gather in Brussels

14 al-Qaida suspects held as Europe's leaders gather in Brussels

Probable terrorist attack prevented, say ministers
'Martyrdom' video found but target unknown

Duncan Campbell and Richard Norton-Taylor | December 12, 2008

Belgian police detained 14 people alleged to have links to al-Qaida in Brussels yesterday as the EU summit got under way. One of those held had made a "martyrdom video", including a farewell message, according to Belgian authorities.

The arrests took place during a series of raids in Brussels and included suspects who had been under surveillance for more than a year and had previously travelled to Afghanistan and Pakistan. The police action came just hours before the heads of 27 countries assembled in Brussels for the summit, although there was no evidence that the meeting itself had been specifically targeted.

During the course of Wednesday night and yesterday morning, about 250 police officers raided 16 locations in the capital and one in Liège. Among items seized, according to police, were computers, data storage equipment and a pistol.

"There was no other choice than to intervene today," federal prosecutor Johan Delmulle told reporters. He said a "martyrdom" video had been found in which the suspect allegedly "said goodbye to his loved ones so as to be able to enter paradise with a clear conscience".

Delmulle said it was unclear where the attack had been planned to take place. He said it was possible that a suicide bombing plan might have been drawn up during visits to Afghanistan and Pakistan. It was not clear if any planned attack was aimed at Europe or elsewhere, he added.

Belgian politicians supported the police action. "It is now clear to all that we were dealing with a real risk," the justice and interior ministers said in a statement. "It is more than likely that an attack in Brussels has been prevented."

Yves Leterme, the prime minister, commended the police action. "It is clear that we have to take the terror threat seriously," he said before the first session of the summit.

No details of the nationalities of those held by police were given but it is understood that they included four Belgians.

The investigation is focusing on individuals linked to Nizar Trabelsi, a 37-year-old Tunisian former footballer sentenced to 10 years in prison in 2003 in Belgium for planning to a drive a car bomb into the cafeteria of the Kleine Brogel airbase, where about 100 American military personnel were stationed.

Almost exactly a year ago, Belgian police arrested 14 people alleged to be extremists planning to free Trabelsi. At the time, the government also claimed that it had information suggesting the "preparation of an attack". Trabelsi is also said to have had links with extremist groups in Britain and France.

British counter-terrorism officials said last night that they were working with Belgian and other European security services to try to establish whether the EU summit was the target. They said they were keeping an "open mind". There was no suggestion the target was a British one.

The summit went ahead yesterday under heavy security, with police helicopters flying overhead.

Claude Moniquet, the president of a Brussels-based thinktank, the European Strategic Intelligence and Security Centre, said that those detained included Moroccan-born Malika el-Aroud, a 48-year-old Belgian who writes online in French under the name of Oum Obeyda.

In an interview with the New York Times last May, she said: "It's not my role to set off bombs, that's ridiculous. I have a weapon. It's to write. That's my jihad. You can do many things with words. Writing is also a bomb."

Reuters : Senate report ties Rumsfeld to Abu Ghraib abuse

Senate report ties Rumsfeld to Abu Ghraib abuse

By David Morgan | December 11, 2008

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Former Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld and other senior U.S. officials share much of the blame for detainee abuse at Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq, and Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, according to portions of a report released on Thursday by the Senate Armed Services Committee.

The report's executive summary, made public by the committee's Democratic chairman Sen. Carl Levin of Michigan and its top Republican Sen. John McCain of Arizona, said Rumsfeld contributed to the abuse by authorizing aggressive interrogation techniques at Guantanamo Bay on December 2, 2002.

He rescinded the authorization six weeks later. But the report said word of his approval continued to spread within U.S. military circles and encouraged the use of harsh techniques as far away as Iraq and Afghanistan.

The report concluded that Rumsfeld's actions were "a direct cause of detainee abuse" at Guantanamo and "influenced and contributed to the use of abusive techniques ... in Afghanistan and Iraq."

"The abuse of detainees at Abu Ghraib in late 2003 was not simply the result of a few soldiers acting on their own," the executive summary said.

"Interrogation techniques such as stripping detainees of their clothes, placing them in stress positions and using military working dogs to intimidate them appeared in Iraq only after they had been approved for use in Afghanistan and at (Guantanamo)."

The detainee scandal at Abu Ghraib and later revelations of aggressive U.S. interrogations such as "waterboarding" led to an international outcry and charges that the United States allowed prisoners to be tortured, a claim denied by the Bush administration.

The Bush administration has since recanted the policies under pressure from Congress, while President-elect Barack Obama has vowed to close the U.S. military prison at Guantanamo Bay.

The report found that the military derived the techniques from a Survival Evasion Resistance and Escape program, or SERE, which trains U.S. soldiers to resist enemy interrogation that does not conform to the Geneva Conventions or international law.

"These policies are wrong and must never be repeated," McCain, who last month ended an unsuccessful bid for the White House, said in a statement released with the executive summary.

McCain said the report revealed an "inexcusable link between abusive interrogation techniques used by our enemies who ignored the Geneva Conventions and interrogation policy for detainees in U.S. custody."

The full report, billed as the most thorough examination of U.S. military detainee policy by Congress, remains classified.

Committee staff said the full report was approved on November 20 in a unanimous voice vote by 17 of the panel's 25 members. The panel consists of 13 Democrats and 12 Republicans.

The executive summary also traces the erosion of detainee treatment standards to a Feb,. 7, 2002, memorandum signed by President George W. Bush stating that the Geneva Convention did not apply to the U.S. war with al Qaeda and that Taliban detainees were not entitled to prisoner of war status or legal protections.

"The president's order closed off application of Common Article 3 of the Geneva Conventions, which would have afforded minimum standards for humane treatment," the summary said.

Members of Bush's Cabinet and other senior officials participated in meetings inside the White House in 2002 and 2003 where specific interrogation techniques were discussed, according to the report.

The committee also blamed former Chairman of the U.S. Joint Chiefs of Staff Gen. Richard Myers for undermining the military's review of interrogation methods.

© Thomson Reuters 2008 All rights reserved

NYT : India Presses Pakistan on Terrorism but Finds Its Own Options Limited

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.”

Press TV : Suspects with al-Qaeda links arrested

Suspects with al-Qaeda links arrested

December 12, 2008

Belgian officials say that the police have arrested 14 people suspected of terrorist links, allegedly close to committing an act of terror.

The arrests made on Thursday took place as officials said the suspects were allegedly going to commit an al-Qaeda-style terrorist act.

A Belgian government statement said that the target remained unknown but added, "it is more than likely that an attack in Brussels has been prevented."

Following 16 overnight raids by police in Brussels and Liege, the suspects were taken into custody. This was just hours before EU leaders were to begin a two-day summit meeting in Brussels to debate an economic stimulus plan and environmental proposals, UPI reported.

One of the suspects had already 'said goodbye to his loved ones' in a farewell video, federal prosecutor Johan Delmulle told reporters. Another suspect, Malika el-Aroud, is the widow of one of the men who assassinated a key opponent of the Taliban in Afghanistan two days before Sept. 11, 2001, CNN reported.

Belgian Prime Minister Yves Leterme meanwhile told reporters as he arrived at the EU summit, "The very effective reaction of law-enforcement authorities shows that these security measures are really necessary."

SM/HAR

AHN : Suicide Bomber Hits Iraqi Restaurant, Kills 50

Suicide Bomber Hits Iraqi Restaurant, Kills 50

AHN Staff | December 11, 2008

Baghdad, Iraq (AHN) - A suicide bomber walked in and blew himself up inside a restaurant near the northern Iraqi city of Kirkuk killing about 50 people and injuring 100 hundred others on Thursday.

Officials and witnesses said women and children were among those killed and injured from the explosion that struck during lunch hour and on the Muslim holiday of Eid al-Adha.

Kirkuk deputy governor Saeed Rakan suspect that the suicide bomber was targeting Kurdish politicians and Arab tribal officials having a lunch meeting at the restaurant.

Last year, a car bomb exploded and killed 25 people in a branch of the same restaurant, which was regarded as safe and frequented by Kurdish, Arab and Turkmen politicians.

Reuters : Pakistan acts against one of India's most-wanted

Pakistan acts against one of India's most-wanted

By Krittivas Mukherjee and C. Bryson Hull | December 11, 2008

NEW DELHI (Reuters) - Pakistan put the founder of a militant group blamed for the Mumbai attacks under house arrest on Thursday, responding to intense pressure to wipe out what India called "the epicenter of terrorism."

The detention of Hafiz Saeed, the founder of the outlawed Lashkar-e-Taiba (LeT) militant group who now runs the Jamaat-ud-Dawa charity seen as its front, came after the United Nations placed him on its terrorism sanctions list.

"Police have encircled the house of Hafiz Saeed in Lahore and told him he cannot go out of the home. They have told him detention orders will be formally served to him shortly," Saeed's spokesman Abdullah Montazir said.

India blames LeT for the Mumbai attacks which killed 179 people last month and also for earlier ones, including a 2001 assault on parliament that nearly thrust the nuclear-armed south Asian rivals into their fourth war since independence from Britain in 1947.

A spokesman for Pakistan's central bank said directives had been issued to banks to freeze the accounts of Jamaat-ud-Dawa, Saeed and three associates included in the U.N. sanctions, which also impose a travel ban on the blacklisted individuals.

Police in Karachi and Hyderabad sealed the offices of Jamaat-ud-Dawa. Television reports said the charity would be banned though no official announcement had yet been made as yet.

But Indian Prime Minister Manmohan Singh, speaking to parliament before the lower house passed a largely symbolic resolution condemning the attacks and pledging to find those responsible, said Pakistan's efforts had not been enough.

"We have to galvanize the international community into dealing sternly and effectively with the epicenter of terrorism, which is located in Pakistan. The infrastructure of terrorism has to be dismantled permanently," he said in comments that preceded Saeed's house arrest.

"WAR NO SOLUTION"

Singh said he had told world leaders that India "could not be satisfied with mere assurances."

"We have noted the reported steps that have been taken by Pakistan. But clearly much more needs to be done and the actions should be pursued to their logical conclusion," he said,

He also reiterated that "all means and measures" needed to wipe out militants would be used.

India has been angry at what it sees as the Pakistani government's tolerance of militants, and Indian External Affairs Minister Pranab Mukherjee earlier on Thursday said India had given Pakistan a list of 40 people it wants handed over.

Asked by an angry lawmaker why India was not attacking Pakistan after so much proof of its complicity in fomenting trouble in India, Mukherjee replied: "That is no solution."

Indian officials had previously demanded that Pakistan hand over 20 suspected militants and others it wants for past attacks.

Keeping up the pressure on Pakistan, U.S. Deputy Secretary of State John Negroponte arrived in Islamabad on Thursday to follow up visits by his boss, Condoleezza Rice, to India and Pakistan last week.

Washington has engaged in intensive diplomacy to stop tensions from mounting between Pakistan and India, and to keep Islamabad focused on fighting the Taliban and al Qaeda.

Global pressure has seen Pakistan raid several Islamist militant training camps and detain or arrest some of the militant leaders India wants extradited.

Pakistani security forces have arrested around 20 militants in raids, an intelligence official told Reuters on Thursday.

Analysts say Pakistani intelligence has ties to some of those India wants, and that its civilian government risks political fallout if it acts against them.

Saeed led the LeT militant group until December 2001, when he quit a few days before Pakistan complied with a U.S. move to put the group on a list of individuals and organizations with links to al Qaeda and the Taliban.

Saeed, one of the most wanted men in India, has since headed Jamaat-ud-Dawa.

Newsweek : Pakistan’s Big Risk

Pakistan’s Big Risk

The ban on an Islamist group linked to the Mumbai attacks gives Islamabad one more enemy to worry about.

Ron Moreau | Newsweek Web Exclusive | December 11, 2008

When a devastating earthquake shook mountainous Kashmir in October 2005, killing 80,000 people, burying entire villages under landslides, one of the first and best-equipped relief organizations on the scene was the Jamaat-ul-Dawa charity. It brought in physicians, surgeons and nurses. It set up emergency surgical and first-aid clinics. It pitched tents to house the homeless and distributed food and medicine to tens of thousands. It stayed behind and helped to build some 5,000 permanent homes for the displaced.

It's no wonder that Jamaat was able to react so quickly. Kashmir has long been a recruiting and training ground for Jamaat's other face—the Islamist, anti-Indian Lashkar-e-Taiba guerrilla organization, which both Indian and U.S. intelligence have singled out as the planner and organizer of last month's murderous Mumbai attacks. Lashkar's main aim is to wrest the Indian sector of Kashmir from New Delhi's control through violence.

Today Islamabad took the extraordinary and surprising step of banning Jamaat from Pakistan. Police quickly closed dozens of Jamaat's offices across the country, including nine in the sprawling port city of Karachi, the country's largest. The government also issued an arrest warrant for the Jamaat's amir, or supreme leader, Hafiz Mohammad Saeed, who is based at a mosque and madrassa complex in Lahore. "We are required to take action against Jamaat and its leaders under the Security Council resolution," said Sherry Rehman, the information minister told NEWSWEEK.

In a startling admission for a Pakistani leader, Prime Minister Yousuf Raza Gilani said today that his government was investigating links between Jamaat and Lashkar, and admitted that "the two groups have the same leadership." This is the first time any Pakistan leader has acknowledged the link between the two groups.

The crackdown is the Pakistani government's most serious action taken against an extremist organization since soon after 9/11, when it banned Lashkar. It could be a dangerous gamble for Islamabad. Many Pakistanis, who may be sympathetic to Jamaat and its charitable works and therefore willing to overlook its association with Lashkar's gunmen, could oppose the government's iron-fisted policy. Islamist groups and the religious parties will no doubt try to organize public anti-government and pro-Jamaat organizations. The group's suppression may also drive many of its adherents underground where they could hook up with still-active Lashkar operatives and begin a violent action against the government.

Pakistan's move against Jamaat comes after weeks of pressure on Islamabad by India and the United States. Jamaat's top operatives, such as Zakiur Rehman Lakhvi, one of Lashkar's founders, recruited, trained and controlled the 10 gunmen who carried out the killing of more than 170 people in Mumbai, according to Indian and U.S. intelligence. Pakistan at first firmly denied that any Pakistanis were involved in the massacre, but this week, as evidence of Lashkar's involvement mounted, the government belatedly took action against the Lashkar-Jamaat combine. It started by raiding a riverside Jamaat madrassa complex near Muzaffarabad last Sunday. After a brief firefight it arrested Lakhvi and several other key Lashkar leaders.

That move was not enough to satisfy New Delhi and Washington. To increase the pressure, a United Nations Security Council committee on Wednesday declared Jamaat a terrorist organization and slapped it with U.N. sanctions, including the freezing of its assets, a travel ban on its members and an arms embargo on the organization. On Thursday, to ramp up the pressure, U.S. Deputy Secretary of State John Negroponte arrived in Islamabad on Thursday on the heels of Condoleezza Rice and Joint Chiefs of Staff Chairman Admiral Mike Mullen. Sensing that further resistance could seriously damage relations with Washington, Pakistan launched what appeared to be a nationwide crackdown on Jamaat and its leadership.

There's little doubt that the distinction between Lashkar and Jamaat, which roughly translates as "enter into the fold of Islam," is more apparent than real. Both organizations fed into the other. Saeed, a onetime university professor and adherent to the harsh Wahhabi school of Islam, had founded Jamaat back in 1985 as a relief organization to help flood victims. Soon afterwards he and Lakhvi founded Lashkar with the assistance of the Pakistani military's powerful Inter-Service Intelligence spy agency. The ISI and the Pakistani military used Lashkar as they did other similar extremist guerrilla groups they created as an inexpensive foreign-policy arm of the Pakistani state. Lashkar's men fought in both Afghanistan and inside Indian Kashmir, furthering Pakistani goals.

Saeed, from his lair in Lahore, regularly gives anti-Indian and anti-American speeches and denounces Pakistan's cooperation with Washington in the war against armed extremists. Just before the warrant for his arrest was issued, Saeed told a news conference in Lahore: "If India or the U.S. has any proof against Jamaat-ul-Dawa, we are ready to stand in any court. We do not beg, we demand justice." He denied that his group was involved in the Mumbai attacks. "We will challenge the [U.N.] decision in the international court of justice," he said. Not long after he spoke, a large contingent of police surrounded his house in Lahore and ordered him not to venture out.

This isn't the first time Saeed has been placed under house arrest. Shortly after the attack on the Indian Parliament in December 2001, New Delhi accused Lashkar of involvement, which led to then Pakistani President Pervez Musharraf to ban Lashkar from Pakistan. Saeed was detained and spent most of 2002 under house arrest. He then let it be known that he had severed his links with Lashkar. Upon his quiet release he ostensibly concentrated on leading Jamaat, but he continued to spew his hard-line hateful messages.

It's unlikely that Saeed ever cut any ties with Lashkar because the two groups were one in the same. Jamaat was always the organization's public, philanthropic face, while Lashkar was its militant arm. Funds generated for Jamaat and its charitable relief efforts may have been channeled to Lashkar's militants. Led by Saeed, Jamaat's followers openly preached jihad against India, a wresting of Kashmir from India by any means, and virulent anti-Americanism. They are bitterly opposed to any rapprochement between India and Pakistan, seeing it as being a sellout of the Kashmiri cause of independence or Pakistani control.

Over the years Jamaat has morphed into a respected and popular charity. It has a nationwide footprint. Recently when an earthquake leveled hundreds of villages in Baluchistan, Jamaat was quickly there with a Kashmir-like relief effort. Its followers even traveled to Iran to help the victims of the earthquake in Bam in 2003. It sent aid to Indonesia following the 2006 tsunami. It operates mobile medical camps in poor, remote areas, carrying out surgery and eye treatment for free. It operates 150 or so free pharmaceutical dispensaries around the country. It publishes a weekly newspaper, three monthly magazines and even a bimonthly for children. Not surprisingly, the publications' message is strongly Islamist and anti-Indian. According to its Web site, Jamaat has local offices in "almost every town and city" in Pakistan. It claims to have spent at least $8.74 million since 2003 on various charitable initiatives.

Its flagship operation is located in a poor rural area near Muridke, just west of Lahore. The 150-acre, gated complex, called Markaz-e-Taiba, or "Center of the Pious," features a mosque, a madrassa for 3,000 students— including some girls, a hospital and a farm. At the school, the students who are largely drawn from the dirt-poor villages surrounding the complex not only learn the Koran by heart but also study with the use of computers and science labs. "There is no fear here," says Yahya Mujahid, a Jamaat spokesman. "It is upsetting," Mujahid told NEWSWEEK just before the crackdown, "to be doubted and misrepresented when all we have done and all we want to do is to help our fellow man."

So far Lashkar has not attacked the Pakistani security services in retaliation. But it could follow the example of other Kashmiri guerrilla groups such as Jaish-e-Muhammad, which was also banned and subsequently struck back violently against the government. Now Lashkar, and disgruntled Jamaat supporters, may strike back. Islamabad may have taken a giant step toward satisfying Indian and American demands for tough action. It may also find itself facing not only the Pakistani Taliban and Al Qaeda along the Afghan border, but another armed and dangerous enemy as well.

With Zahid Hussain

MSNBC : 9/11 suspects ask to make 'confessions'

9/11 suspects ask to make 'confessions'

Select relatives of victims attend proceedings at Guantanamo Bay

December 8, 2008

GUANTANAMO BAY NAVAL BASE, Cuba - The alleged mastermind of the Sept. 11 attacks and four co-defendants told a military judge Monday they want to immediately confess at their war-crimes tribunal, setting up likely guilty pleas and their possible executions.

The five said they decided on Nov. 4, the day President-elect Barack Obama was elected to the White House, to abandon all defenses against the capital charges — in effect daring the Pentagon to grant their wish for martyrdom.

The judge ordered lawyers to advise him by Jan. 4 whether the Pentagon can apply the death penalty — which military prosecutors are seeking — without a jury trial.

Khalid Sheikh Mohammed and two others said they would postpone entering pleas until the military determines their two co-defendants are mentally competent. "We want everyone to plead together," he said.

Mohammed and another defendant have said they would welcome execution as a path to martyrdom, but the announcement came as a shock to some of the victims' families.

Families attend hearings

"When they admitted their guilt, my reaction was, 'Yes!' My inclination was to jump up and say 'Yay!' But I managed to maintain my decorum," said Maureen Santora, of Long Island City, N.Y., whose firefighter son Christopher died responding to the World Trade Center attacks.

Santora was one of nine victims' relatives watching the proceedings, the first time relatives of the 2,975 people killed in the attacks have been allowed to observe the war-crimes trials. She watched from the back of the courtroom, wearing black and clutching a photo of her son in uniform.

Alice Hoagland, of Redwood Estates, California, was there for her son Mark Bingham, who is believed to be one of the passengers who fought hijackers on United Flight 93 before it crashed in rural Pennsylvania. She said the defendants' announcement was "like a real bombshell to me."

She told reporters during a break that she hoped Obama, "an even-minded and just man," would ensure the five alleged mass murderers are punished. She said she welcomed the opportunity to see the trial because it was a "historic" moment. But she said it did not heal the loss of her son.

"I do not seek closure in my life," she said as she blinked back tears.

'I don't trust you'

In a letter the judge read aloud in court, the five defendants said they "request an immediate hearing session to announce our confessions."

The judge, Army Col. Stephen Henley, asked all five if they were prepared to enter a plea, and all five said yes. But Henley said competency hearings for two of the detainees precluded them from immediately filing pleas.

The letter implies the defendants want to plead guilty, but does not specify whether they will admit to any specific charges. It also says they wish to drop all previous defense motions.

However, that didn't mean they had repented.

"I reaffirm my allegiance to Osama bin Laden," defendant Ramzi Binalshibh blurted out in Arabic at the end of the hearing. "I hope the jihad continues and I hope it hits the heart of America with weapons of mass destruction."

Their letter was so unexpected that Henley was unsure how to proceed. He noted that the law specifies that only defendants unanimously convicted by a jury can be sentenced to death in the tribunals. No jury has been seated.

Mohammed, who has already told interrogators he was the mastermind of the Sept. 11 attacks, also said Monday that he has no faith in the judge, his Pentagon-appointed lawyers or President George W. Bush.

Sporting a chest-length gray beard, Mohammed said in English: "I don't trust you."

He also dismissed one of his standby military attorneys because he had served in Iraq.

Guantanamo expected to close

The first U.S. war-crimes trials since World War II are teetering on the edge of extinction. Obama opposes the military commissions — as the Guantanamo trials are called — and has pledged to close the detention center holding some 250 men soon after taking office next month.

Even if a trial were held, it is all but certain none would begin before Obama takes office on Jan. 20. Still, the U.S. military is pressing forward with the case until it receives orders to the contrary.

"We serve the sitting president and will continue to do so until President-elect Obama takes office," said Navy Cmdr. Jeffrey Gordon, a Pentagon spokesman.
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Human-rights observers said the judge's uncertainty about sentencing is further evidence that the Guantanamo trials should be shut down.

"The fact that the judge doesn't know whether they can be sentenced to death in one of the most important trials in U.S. history shows the circus-like atmosphere of the military commissions," said Jennifer Daskal of Human Rights Watch. "These cases belong in federal court."

One observer who lost his parents in the attacks said he supports holding the trials at Guantanamo Bay.

"The U.S. is doing its best to prove to the world that this is a fair proceeding," said Hamilton Peterson of Bethesda, Md., whose parents Donald and Jean were on United Flight 93.

"It was stunning to see today how not only do the defendants comprehend their extensive rights ... they are explicitly asking the court to hurry up because they are bored with the due process they are receiving."

Guardian : 14 al-Qaida suspects held as Europe's leaders gather in Brussels

14 al-Qaida suspects held as Europe's leaders gather in Brussels

• Probable terrorist attack prevented, say ministers
• 'Martyrdom' video found but target unknown

Duncan Campbell and Richard Norton-Taylor | December 12, 2008

Belgian police detained 14 people alleged to have links to al-Qaida in Brussels yesterday as the EU summit got under way. One of those held had made a "martyrdom video", including a farewell message, according to Belgian authorities.

The arrests took place during a series of raids in Brussels and included suspects who had been under surveillance for more than a year and had previously travelled to Afghanistan and Pakistan. The police action came just hours before the heads of 27 countries assembled in Brussels for the summit, although there was no evidence that the meeting itself had been specifically targeted.

During the course of Wednesday night and yesterday morning, about 250 police officers raided 16 locations in the capital and one in Liège. Among items seized, according to police, were computers, data storage equipment and a pistol.

"There was no other choice than to intervene today," federal prosecutor Johan Delmulle told reporters. He said a "martyrdom" video had been found in which the suspect allegedly "said goodbye to his loved ones so as to be able to enter paradise with a clear conscience".

Delmulle said it was unclear where the attack had been planned to take place. He said it was possible that a suicide bombing plan might have been drawn up during visits to Afghanistan and Pakistan. It was not clear if any planned attack was aimed at Europe or elsewhere, he added.

Belgian politicians supported the police action. "It is now clear to all that we were dealing with a real risk," the justice and interior ministers said in a statement. "It is more than likely that an attack in Brussels has been prevented."

Yves Leterme, the prime minister, commended the police action. "It is clear that we have to take the terror threat seriously," he said before the first session of the summit.

No details of the nationalities of those held by police were given but it is understood that they included four Belgians.

The investigation is focusing on individuals linked to Nizar Trabelsi, a 37-year-old Tunisian former footballer sentenced to 10 years in prison in 2003 in Belgium for planning to a drive a car bomb into the cafeteria of the Kleine Brogel airbase, where about 100 American military personnel were stationed.

Almost exactly a year ago, Belgian police arrested 14 people alleged to be extremists planning to free Trabelsi. At the time, the government also claimed that it had information suggesting the "preparation of an attack". Trabelsi is also said to have had links with extremist groups in Britain and France.

British counter-terrorism officials said last night that they were working with Belgian and other European security services to try to establish whether the EU summit was the target. They said they were keeping an "open mind". There was no suggestion the target was a British one.

The summit went ahead yesterday under heavy security, with police helicopters flying overhead.

Claude Moniquet, the president of a Brussels-based thinktank, the European Strategic Intelligence and Security Centre, said that those detained included Moroccan-born Malika el-Aroud, a 48-year-old Belgian who writes online in French under the name of Oum Obeyda.

In an interview with the New York Times last May, she said: "It's not my role to set off bombs, that's ridiculous. I have a weapon. It's to write. That's my jihad. You can do many things with words. Writing is also a bomb."

MSNBC : 160 NATO supply trucks torched in Pakistan

160 NATO supply trucks torched in Pakistan

Incident is biggest assault yet on a vital military supply line to Afghanistan

December 7, 2008

PESHAWAR, Pakistan - Militants blasted their way into two transport terminals in Pakistan on Sunday and torched more than 160 vehicles destined for U.S.-led troops in Afghanistan, in the biggest assault yet on a vital military supply line, officials said.

The U.S. military said its losses in the raid near the northwestern city of Peshawar would have only a "minimal" impact on its operations against resurgent Taliban-led militants in Afghanistan.

However, the attack's boldness will fuel concern that Taliban militants are tightening their hold around Peshawar and could choke the supply route through the famed Khyber Pass.

Up to 75 percent of supplies for Western forces in landlocked Afghanistan pass through Pakistan after being unloaded from ships at the Arabian sea port of Karachi. NATO is already seeking an alternative route through Central Asia.

Terminal manager Kifayatullah Khan said armed men flattened the gate before dawn with a rocket-propelled grenade, shot dead a guard and set fire to a total of 106 vehicles, including about 70 Humvees.

An Associated Press reporter who visited the depot saw six rows of destroyed Humvees and military trucks parked close together, some of them on flatbed trailers, all of them gutted and twisted by the flames.

Khan said shipping documents showed they were destined for U.S. forces and the Western-trained Afghan National Army.

The attackers fled after a brief exchange of fire with police, who arrived about 40 minutes later, Khan said.

The nine other guards who were on duty but stood helplessly aside put the number of assailants at 300, Khan said, though police official Kashif Alam said there were only 30.

At the nearby Faisal depot, manager Shah Iran said 60 vehicles destined for Afghanistan as well as three Pakistani trucks were burned in a similar assault.

It was unclear if one or two bands of gunmen were involved.

Latest in a series of attacks

The attack was the latest in a series that have highlighted the vulnerability of the supply route to the spreading power of the Taliban and other Islamic militants in the border region.

Suspected insurgents also attacked the Faisal terminal last week and burned 12 trucks loaded with NATO supplies, including several Humvees. Two guards were shot dead.

In November, militants made off with a Humvee during a raid on the treacherous road from Peshawar to the Afghan border and showed it off later to reporters at a militant stronghold further south.

The U.S. military in Afghanistan said in a statement that an unspecified number of its containers were destroyed in the attack but that their loss would have "minimal effect on our operations."

"It's militarily insignificant," U.S. spokeswoman Lt. Col. Rumi Nielsen-Green said. "You can't imagine the volume of supplies that come through there and elsewhere and other ways."

"So far there hasn't been a significant loss or impact to our mission," she said.

Pakistan halted traffic through the Khyber Pass for several days in November while it arranged for troops to guard the slow-moving convoys.

Shahedullah Baig, a spokesman for the interior minister in Islamabad, insisted Sunday that the extra security covered the terminals.

"They are fully protected, but in this kind of situation such incidents happen," Baig said.

However, Khan, the depot manager, said that was untrue, and there were only a handful of police at the terminals on Sunday afternoon.

Khan said his business, which handles some 600 truckloads a month for foreign troops in Afghanistan, had received repeated threats. He didn't want to discuss whom they were from for fear of incurring further wrath.

"We don't feel safe here at all," he said. "It is almost impossible for us to continue with this business."

Peshawar has seen a surge in violence in recent weeks, including the slaying of an American working on a U.S.-funded aid project.

The city lies close to the lawless tribal regions along the Afghan border, where Osama bin Laden and other top al-Qaida leaders are believed to be hiding.

On Saturday, a car bomb detonated in a busy market area of the city, killing 29 people and injuring 100 more. The blast wrecked a Shiite Muslim mosque and a hotel, but the motive and culprits remained unclear.

The instability in Pakistan's northwest coincides with serious tensions with its eastern neighbor India in the wake of recent terrorist attacks in Mumbai.

New Delhi blames the attack, which killed 171 people, on an Islamic militant group fighting Indian rule in the disputed Kashmir region, heightening tension between the nuclear-armed neighbors that could distract Pakistan from its role in helping the U.S. fight terrorism.

© 2008 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.

Counterpunch : By Way of Pakistan: From Baghdad to Mumbai

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.

Telegraph : Rashid Rauf was a living example of the danger from Pakistan's jihadis - until he was killed

Rashid Rauf was a living example of the danger from Pakistan's jihadis - until he was killed

The case of Rashid Rauf underscores not only the danger posed to Britain from Pakistan's jihadi underworld but also the friction between the two countries which can make terrorism so difficult to combat.

By Isambard Wilkinson in Islamabad | November 22, 2008

As one of the "most wanted" al-Qaeda terrorist suspects, Rauf, who held dual British-Pakistani nationality, was at the centre of wrangling between Britain and Pakistan from the moment he was seized.

After his arrest in 2006 in the southern Punjabi town of Bahawalpur at the behest of Washington, Britain tried assiduously to secure his extradition from Pakistan, an ally in the War on Terror.

Not only was he wanted in connection with the trans-Atlantic bomb plot, but he was also alleged to have been a point man for British nationals seeking to contact al-Qaeda members in Pakistan for training and to wage jihad.

British officials became exasperated with their Pakistani counterparts who made a series of awkward demands in return.

But in December 2007, Rauf escaped, in highly questionable circumstances, from Pakistani police custody.

After an appearence in a court in Rawalpindi, he was allowed by his two prison escorts to visit an American hamburger restaurant and then a mosque, from where he escaped through a back door. Rauf may well have sought refuge in the lawless border tribal areas which are a refuge for al-Qaeda.

One British security service official claimed not to know whether the escape was "cock up or conspiracy", but the episode further damaged the already fraught relationship - especially because some Pakistani officials were clearly less than enthusiastic about handing Rauf over to Britain.

Their reticence may have been connected to Rauf's alleged personal links with a jihadi terrorist group, Jaish-i-Mohammed, which has been backed by Pakistani military intelligence.

While in Pakistan, Rauf married a relative of one of Pakistan's most notorious militant leaders, Azhar Masood Azhar, the head of the group.

Now Gen Musharraf has gone but President Asif Zardari and his ruling Pakistan People's Party have little control over pro-jihadi stalwarts who are still in the establishment.

British intelligence officials fear that jihadis in Pakistan now pose more of a threat to Britain than they did seven years ago at the time of the Sept 11 attacks. Significant numbers of British citizens continue to flock to the tribal areas for jihad training, perhaps more than ever before.

But the security threat does not only come from the lawless tribal areas. Southern Punjab, where Rauf was arrested, was a clandestine hub used by Pakistani military intelligence to foster terrorist groups in the 1990s for jihad in Indian-held Kashmir.

Owais Ghani, the governor of the tribal areas, and senior military officials have warned publicly in recent months that the region continues to produce militants who are flocking to join the Taliban and fight the Pakistan Army.

The conditions for the production of more Raufs are still in place, but his reported death highlights American willingness to act where Pakistan cannot or will not - and ignore the shrieks from Pakistanis about US violations of their sovereignty.

"It goes to show that US intelligence is improving if they did hit Rauf," said Talat Masood, a retired general and defence analyst.

"The effect of Pakistan's protest against such strikes will be minimal if there is convincing proof that the missile strikes are hitting senior al-Qaeda figures, which Pakistan has been unable to do."

BNP : Mumbai Terrorists Told to “Kill Whites, Especially British and Americans”

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.

Sunday Mercury : Was Birmingham-born militant Rashid Rauf behind Mumbai attack?

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.

Outlook India : The Gateway Of India

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.

MSNBC : Attributes of India attacks suggest outside help

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.

Times of India : Mumbai attack: Pak role under scrutiny

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.

The News [Pak] : UK terror suspect was linked to Masood Azhar

UK terror suspect was linked to Masood Azhar

By Amir Mir | November 23, 2008

LAHORE: A high-level probe ordered by the Pakistani authorities into the 2007 dramatic escape of the British terror plot suspect Rashid Rauf from police custody had concluded that he had fled with the collusion of the police and some Jaish-e-Mohammad-linked militants while he was being transported to the Adiala Jail, Rawalpindi after a court appearance.

Rashid Rauf, who is reported to have been killed in the North Waziristan area on Friday in a US missile strike along with four other al-Qaeda-linked militants, was arrested on August 9, 2007 [sic; s/b 2006] from a Jaish-e-Mohammad-run seminary, the Madrassa Madina, situated in the Model Town area of Bahawalpur. He was arrested a couple of days [sic] before the British crackdown and arrests of the main plotters in London. Rashid Rauf became the focus of world attention after being named by the British intelligence as the main plotter of a terrorist plan to blow up the US-bound British airliners with the help of liquid explosives. He was arrested in Pakistan after a tip-off from British anti-terrorism authorities, days [sic] before a series of August 2006 raids and arrests in Britain of eight men accused of conspiring to smuggle liquid bombs on board a series of Atlantic flights. However, almost 16 months after his arrest, Rashid escaped from the police custody under mysterious circumstances, at a time the British government had officially requested Pakistan to extradite him to London.

A subsequent inquiry into his December 15 escape dismissed claims by Rauf’s police guards that he had slipped away after being allowed to pray in a mosque. The report of the probe committee described as concocted the claim made by his two police guards that he mysteriously disappeared from the mosque. “The escape was made good in the vicinity of F-8 Markaz, the district court in Islamabad, and right after the hearing. Therefore, it is not a case of negligence, but a case of criminal collusion with the accused and facilitating him to escape. F-8 Markaz is located in the heart of Islamabad. Police constables Mohammad Tufail and Nawabzada, who were guarding Rauf, had claimed that he had slipped out of the back door of a mosque after they allowed him to offer afternoon prayers there,” stated the probe report.

Those conducting the inquiry had also reportedly questioned Mufti Abdul Rauf, the younger brother of the Jaish-e-Mohammad chief Maulana Masood Azhar for his alleged involvement in bribing the police constables on duty. The mobile phone call record of the two constables suggested that Nawabzada and Tufail talked to each other at least three times after Rauf went missing besides making numerous other phone calls, probably to some militants who had masterminded the escape plan. Interestingly, the location of constable Nawabzada was a private bus stand near Choor (from where Rauf was taken to his next destination) while Tufail was somewhere else, whereas both claimed that they had been guarding Rauf.

As soon as Rashid Rauf escaped, the authorities arrested from Bahawalpur two of the five younger brothers of Masood Azhar and two of his six brothers-in-law. The arrests were made because of the fact that Rashid Rauf was the brother-in-law of one of Masood Azhar’s younger brother, Mohammad Tahir. Following the arrest of his two sons and two sons-in-law, Hafiz Allah Bukhsh, the father of Masood Azhar, told media people in Bahawalpur that Rashid was a member of the Jaish but left it to join the rivals who were more interested in promoting al-Qaeda’s anti-Western agenda. “He was member of our group but later he deserted us and joined the Jamaatul Furqaan, led by a Jaish dissident, Maulana Abdul Jabbar,” Allah Bukhsh said at the Jaish headquarters in Bahawalpur in December 2007. “Our cause is the liberation of Jammu and Kashmir, while their main cause is Afghanistan. They are anti-American but we are not,” Bukhsh added.

To a question, Bukhsh said he spoke with Rashid Rauf several times after he left the Jaish and conceded that the Briton was related by marriage to one of his own sons, Mohammad Tahir. In Bahawalpur, he added, Rashid Rauf was known as Mohammad Khalid Rauf who has two young daughters (at that time) -- one less than a year old and the other around two years old. On August 17, 2007, a senior Pakistani official conceded [sic] that the British airport terror plot was sanctioned by Dr Ayman Zawahiri and that Rashid was the planner of the attacks. However, on December 13, 2007, the terrorism charges on Rashid were dropped as the court ruled that there was no evidence of him being involved in planning any terrorist activity.

Two days later, on December 15, 2007, as pressure mounted from Britain for his extradition, Rashid Rauf mysteriously escaped from the police custody, only to be killed in North Waziristan in a US air strike 11 months later, thus confirming [sic] the British intelligence reports that he had been an active member of the Osama-led [sic] terror organisation.

Frontier Post : Conspiracy shrouds Rauf’s death: Chughtai Abdul Sattar Qamar

Conspiracy shrouds Rauf’s death: Chughtai Abdul Sattar Qamar

November 28, 2008

MULTAN: British terror plot suspect Rashid Rauf was handed over to Britain and his death news spread under a well-planned conspiracy, alleged Maulana Riaz Chughtai, Amir of JUI, who is also known as a Rashid's spokesman in Bahawalpur while talking to newsmen on Thursday. He asked "where is his body if he was killed in missile attack in North Waziristan and his body should be handed over to his wife for funeral rites. He said that Rashid's father Abdul Rauf was a Kashmiri who was settled in United Kingdom for business. Rashid was married to Ummat Wadood Saira, daughter of late Maulana Ghulam Mustafa in 2003. Saira gave birth to two daughters Naushaiba Fatima (3) and Saliha (2). After his acquittal in a case of plotting to blow up transatlantic airliners in 2006, he came back to Pakistan and started cosmetics business in Karachi. During this he was married and he constructed a home in Bahawalpur. Speaking through Rauf's spokesman, Maulana Riaz Chughtai, the family of Rauf's wife in Pakistan said that the body had not been handed over to them and the authorities were not responding to their questions. Rauf's death had been revealed by unnamed Pakistani intelligence agents, the usual source of information on the casualties of American strikes in the tribal area. "It's all a concocted and fabricated story," said Chughtai. "We're sure that he is not Rashid Rauf." Rauf escaped from Pakistani custody on December 13 last year in mysterious circumstances, on his way back from a court appearance in the city of Rawalpindi. His escape was a ruse. Nothing was subsequently heard of him, until the news that he had died in North Waziristan. "There was no reason for him to be in North Waziristan, he has no link with al-Qaeda or the Taliban," said the Maulana. He said "the entire family is hopeful that he is still alive. He might have met his death, but not through this strike." he added. He was accused of belonging to a banned militant organisation in Pakistan that has close links to al-Qaeda.