Intelligence officials told a court in Rawalpindi that Lashkar-e-Taiba used several training camps inside Pakistain for the attacks that killed 166 people
 After the 2008 Mumbai attacks, Pakistain took steps to meet the Indian plaint about the participation of Pak elements in their planning and execution. It accepted that Paks were involved. It accepted that Pakistain-based Lashkar-e-Taiba (LeT)
...the Army of the Pure, an Ahl-e-Hadith terror organization founded by Hafiz Saeed. LeT masquerades behind the Jamaat-ud-Dawa facade within Pakistain and periodically blows things up and kills people in India. Despite the fact that it is banned , always an interesting concept in Pakistain, the organization remains an blatant tool and perhaps an arm of the ISI...
was involved too and started a trial against one of its leaders, Ziaur Rehman Lakhvi, and several others at an anti-terrorism court inside Adiala Jail in Rawalpindi. But it denied that the ISI was involved.
This month, Pakistain authorities decided to tell the Court that Al-Qaeda-linked LeT used several training camps inside Pakistain for the attacks. This is an advance on the trend of agreeing with the details revealed by India after the attacks. The trial has dragged on at Rawalpindi with rumours that the prison conditions for Lakhvi and others were made lax. The Court has recently acquitted deserter Major Haroon Ashiq, the target-killer operated by Al Qaeda commander Ilyas Kashmiri who was later himself killed by a drone. But the latest official admission of the terrorist camps tends to increase the possibility of linking personalities other than those in LeT to Mumbai attacks.
Daily Dawn (11 Nov 2012) reported the following: "Intelligence officials informed an anti-terrorism court (ATC) in Rawalpindi Adiala jail that suspects in the Mumbai attacks case got training at various centres of the banned Lashkar-e-Taiba (LeT) turban organization, including navigational training in Bloody Karachi
...formerly the capital of Pakistain, now merely its most important port and financial center. It may be the largest city in the world, with a population of 18 million, most of whom hate each other and many of whom are armed and dangerous...
| "The suspects were trained at the LeT training centres at Yousaf Goth in Bloody Karachi, Buttle in Mansehra, Mirpur Sakro in Thatta and Muzaffarabad... additional abettors were trained at LeT centres and at sea near Yousaf Goth in Bloody Karachi's Gadap town" |
"The officials were in charge of CID stations in Okara, Bahawalpur, Rahimyar Khan, Mandi Bahauddin and Sheikhupura. They said the suspects, who allegedly participated in the attacks, were trained at the LeT training centres at Yousaf Goth in Bloody Karachi, Buttle in Mansehra,
...a city and an eponymous district in eastern Khyber-Pakthunwa, nestled snug up against Pak Kashmir, with Kohistan and Diamir to the north and Abbottabad to the south...
Mirpur Sakro in Thatta and Muzaffarabad... additional abettors were trained at LeT centres and at sea near Yousaf Goth in Bloody Karachi's Gadap town."
Does this mean that Pakistain has admitted the attacks were planned in Pakistain? No, because in 2009, Pakistain had already acknowledged the Mumbai attacks were partly plotted on its soil and announced criminal proceedings against eight suspects, including three alleged ringleaders, heeding US and Indian demands to punish those responsible for the deaths of 166 people. Pakistain was no longer in denial. Interior Minister Rehman Malik
Pak politician, Interior Minister under the Gilani government. Malik is a former Federal Investigation Agency (FIA) intelligence officer who rose to head the FIA during Benazir Bhutto's second tenure. Malik was tossed from his FIA job in 1998 after documenting the breath-taking corruption of the Sharif family. By unhappy coincidence Nawaz Sharif became PM at just that moment and Malik moved to London one step ahead of the button men. He had to give up the interior ministry job because he held dual Brit citizenship.
announced he had uncovered some training grounds in Bloody Karachi.
The media war that began between India and Pakistain after 2008 should have ended after that, with the Pak media eating humble pie, but it did not happen. After the latest revelation at Adiala jail, the Pak media should have covered the event in great detail. But it did not. Some denial is still there, at least on the part of the media. But after Geo TV's Kamran Khan unveiled the news about the Adiala 'outing' of LeT, the media was too stunned by its defeat to comment on it.
In 2008, the only Pak terrorist captured in the Mumbai attacks, Ajmal Kasab, implicated the Pak Navy and the Dawood Ibrahim network based in Bloody Karachi for providing assistance and training for the Mumbai assault team.
| Documents seized from the late Osama bin Laden's compound show that the dear departed Al Qaeda master was in regular, direct contact with the top man of the LeT. The files also suggest that bin Laden and Al Qaeda had played a significant role in planning the attack on Mumbai |
This is how India and the international community views LeT: "Lashkar-e-Taiba forces fight alongside Al Qaeda and Taliban in Afghanistan. It conducts operations in India, Bangladesh, Pakistain, Afghanistan, Central Asia, and Chechnya. Like Al Qaeda, Lashkar-e-Taiba seeks to establish a Mohammedan caliphate in southern and Central Asia. The group essentially runs a state within a state of Pakistain."
But Pakistain was not willing to admit more than what it admitted in 2009. It was not willing to accept Ajmal Kasab's confessions relating to Pak state functionaries. Then something even more unexpected happened in June 2012. A key suspect in the November 2008 Mumbai attacks, Syed Zabihuddin Ansari alias Abu Jandal, was incarcerated
Keep yer hands where we can see 'em, if yez please!
in Soddy Arabia
...a kingdom taking up the bulk of the Arabian peninsula. Its primary economic activity involves exporting oil and soaking Islamic rubes on the annual hajj pilgrimage. The country supports a large number of princes in whatcha might call princely splendor. When the oil runs out the rest of the world is going to kick sand in their national face...
and turned over to Indian authorities.
Abu Jandal reportedly made significant admissions implicating members of the Mighty Pak Army and ISI in the planning of the attack. The Mumbai siege, he is reported to have told Indian authorities, was orchestrated by LeT, which he described as a long-time proxy of Pakistain's military and intelligence establishment. According to the Indians, he also told them that LeT chieftain Hafiz Muhammad Saeed
...who would be wearing a canvas jacket with very long sleeves anyplace but Pakistain...
was present in the control room during the attack. The Indians say he also named two Mighty Pak Army officers, Sajid Mir and Major Iqbal, as being directly involved in the terrorist attack. Another ex-Pak terrorist, David Headley, was also connected to the Mumbai attacks. He is now under arrest in the US. He was reportedly was paid off (425,000) by Major Iqbal for doing recce for the attacks. Headley admits to have reported to Ilyas Kashmiri in Wazoo, the terrorist who preyed on and launched attacks on the Pakistain Army as well.
More damage was in store. In 2011, the Americans killed Osama bin Laden
... who abandoned all hope when he entered there...
in Abbottabad
... A pleasant city located only 30 convenient miles from Islamabad. The city is noted for its nice weather and good schools. It is the site of Pakistain's military academy, which was within comfortable walking distance of the residence of the late Osama bin Laden....
. Documents captured by them in Osama bin Laden's compound show that the dear departed Al Qaeda master was in regular, direct contact with the Let's top man. The files also suggest that bin Laden and Al Qaeda had played a significant role in planning the attack on Mumbai. The surveillance reports paid for by the ISI's man reportedly ended up in bin Laden's hands.
Bruce Riedel, a former CIA operative and advisor to President B.O. on Afghanistan and Pakistain, based on his opinion on these documents, wrote that Osama bin Laden had been in close contact with Hafiz Muhammad Saeed, the top LeT man, and helped plan the 2008 Mumbai attack. The revelation of Mr Saeed's alleged ties to bin Laden led the US to offer a $10 million bounty for information that could lead to the LeT chieftain's successful prosecution. The relationship is traced back to Abdullah Azzam the founder of both Al Qaeda and LeT, the latter born as Dawat wal Irshad in Beautiful Downtown Peshawar
...capital of Khyber Pakhtunkhwa (formerly known as the North-West Frontier Province), administrative and economic hub for the Federally Administered Tribal Areas of Pakistan. Peshawar is situated near the eastern end of the Khyber Pass, convenient to the Pak-Afghan border. Peshawar has evolved into one of Pakistan's most ethnically and linguistically diverse cities, which means lots of gunfire.
next Azzam's own office. A mentor of Osama bin Laden, Azzam was killed in Peshawar.
One Pak journalist who lost his life telling the truth about the Mumbai attack was Saleem Shahzad. In his book Inside Al Qaeda and the Taliban: Beyond Bin Laden and 9/11(Pluto Press 2011), he wrote that it was Al Qaeda who planned the Mumbai attack 'through former Pakistain army officers with help from LeT without the knowledge of the ISI despite the fact that LeT was on ISI's leash'. He wrote further:
'The Mumbai operation was actually the revival of an old ISI plan. The idea was to deflect the Pakistain Army away from Waziristan and get it to fight India instead. This nearly succeeded: Pakistain's turban leaders Mullah Fazlullah
 ...son-in-law of holy man Sufi Mohammad. Known as Mullah FM , Fazlullah had the habit of grabbing his FM mike when the mood struck him and bellowing forth sermons. Sufi suckered the Pak govt into imposing Shariah on the Swat Valley and then stepped aside whilst Fazlullah and his Talibs imposed a reign of terror on the populace like they hadn't seen before, at least not for a thousand years or so. For some reason the Pak intel services were never able to locate his transmitter, much bomb it. After ruling the place like a conquered province for a year or so, Fazlullahs Talibs began gobbling up more territory as they pushed toward Islamabad, at which point as a matter of self-preservation the Mighty Pak Army threw them out and chased them into Afghanistan...
and Baitullah Mehsud announced that they would fight alongside Pakistain's armed forces in an India-Pakistain war, and the director general of ISI, Lt-Gen Ahmad Shuja Pasha, confirmed this understanding in his briefing to national and foreign correspondents when he called Fazlullah and Baitullah Mehsud Pakistain's strategic assets' (p.95).
In the July 2005 issue of monthly Herald, Zulfiqar Ali described one of the terrorist camps in Mansehra where Al Qaeda had interface with our jihadi organizations, including LeT. The news in 2001 that the Mansehra camp had been disbanded was mere exaggeration. Before Osama bin Laden was finally made to live in Abbottabad, he thought he could be comfortable in Mansehra where Al Qaeda was lending a hand.
Abbas Nasir has noted (Dawn 17 Nov 2012) the sophistication of Jamaat-ud-Dawa
...the front organization of Lashkar-e-Taiba...
(JD), the successor of LeT headed by Mr Saeed, in dealing with the fallout of Mumbai attacks. He relates this image of JD as a welfare organization to Hafiz Muhammad Saeed's interface with the establishment. Nasir quotes:
'Earlier this week, Hindustan Times carried a story that Ziaur Rehman Lakhvi, one of the key accused facing trial for the Mumbai carnage in Rawalpindi's Adiala prison, has fathered a child during his four-year incarceration. The child is said to be two years old. The report says this was disclosed to his Indian interrogators by another key suspect, Abu Jandal, who was extradited from Saudi Arabia. Abu Jandal is reported to have said this good news was given to him by Lakhvi himself in a phone conversation'.
Monthly Naya Zamana (Oct 2012) quoted the BBC as saying that federal Interior Minister Rehman Malik told the visiting Indian foreign minister SM Krishna that Pakistain was helpless to do anything against a popular leader of Jamaat-ud-Dawa because the court had let him off the hook. Rehman Malik explained that after the government arrested him in the wake of Mumbai attacks and produced him before the Court the judge let him go because his lawyer had been a teacher of the said judge. The Court adjudged him as unconnected with LeT. |
[Daily Excelsior] Key 26/11 plotter Sayed Zabiuddin Ansari alias Abu Jundal's lawyer today informed a court here that he wanted to cross-examine Pak-American terrorist David Coleman Headley for four days.
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