FT.com / Asia-Pacific - Bangladesh linked to Mumbai attacks
Bangladesh linked to Mumbai attacks
By Farhan Bokhari in Islamabad
Published: February 6 2009 02:00 | Last updated: February 6 2009 02:00
Pakistan's investigation into the Mumbai terror attacks has unearthed evidence that the commando-style attack on India's financial capital was planned in Bangladesh and refined in India, according to a senior official.
Pakistan is expected to excise Bangladesh's name from the investigation's final report when it is published in the coming days to avoid opening up old rivalries between the two countries. Pakistan has had cool relations with Bangladesh since a 1971 civil war that split Bangladesh from Pakistan.
But a senior Pakistani government official yesterday said: "Bangladesh is of course named [in the draft report] as the country where the attacks were planned, we have no doubt." The findings were due to be made public earlier this week but their release has been delayed.
The allegation is likely to bewilder India and the international community, which have said evidence surrounding the November attacks points to the operation having been launched from Pakistan. The international community has urged Pakistan to take steps to prosecute militants suspected of masterminding the operation and to dismantle terrorist infrastructure.
Shivshankar Menon, India's foreign secretary, this week explicitly linked Pakistan's spy agency to the attack, which India has blamed on Lashkar-e-Taiba, a group with historical links to Pakistan's Inter-Services Intelligence.
Pakistan's Dawn newspaper yesterday reported that Pakistani investigators were closing in on a Bangladeshi connection to the attack. The report further said that some of the planning for the attacks was done in Dubai and that there had been an element of Indian support.
The Pakistani government official who spoke to the Financial Times said: "It was premature to suggest Dubai. But it is clear that this plot was put together in Bangladesh and fine-tuned on Indian soil."
The attacks have strained relations between India and Pakistan. Suggestions of a Pakistani link gathered momentum after it was revealed that Ajmal Kasab, the lone survivor of the ten Mumbai gunmen, was a Pakistani national. But Pakistani officials have sought to play down any link.
Investigators see Bangladesh link in Mumbai terror attacks -DAWN - Top Stories; February 05, 2009
Investigators see Bangladesh link in Mumbai terror attacks
By Baqir Sajjad Syed and Mohammad Asghar
ISLAMABAD, Feb 4: Pakistani investigators probing into the Mumbai attacks are closing in on a Bangladeshi connection to the terrorist strike and are said to have evidence of not only the involvement of a banned militant organisation, Harkat-ul-Jihad-al Islami, Bangladesh (HuJI-B), but also of its role in planning the attack and training the terrorists.
A reference in this regard is likely to be made in the report of the country’s premier investigation agency, FIA, that will be shared soon with India as findings of preliminary investigations.
The report is likely to indicate that the Mumbai attack was handiwork of an ‘international network of Muslim fundamentalists’ present in South Asia and spread all the way to Middle East; and may build the case for regional anti-terror cooperation.
Although contents of the report are being kept as a tightly-guarded secret by the interior ministry, sources privy to it say it would emphasise that the Mumbai incident is not strictly a Pakistan-India issue.
Pakistan’s High Commissioner to the United Kingdom Wajid Shamsul Hassan indicated in a recent interview that investigations had revealed the terrorist attack was not planned in Pakistan. “Pakistani territory was not used so far as the investigators have made their conclusions,” Mr Hassan had said in the interview. “It could have been some other place.”
He did not say which place he was referring to. However, his remarks were dismissed by both Prime Minister Gilani and Foreign Minister Qureshi as ‘hasty’.
The investigators were intensely probing, the sources said, if at least one of the Mumbai attackers was of Bangladesh origin.
A senior western diplomat confirmed this and said there was a strong possibility that one of the attackers was a Bangladeshi national.
It has already been established that Mohammed Ajmal Amir Kasab, the lone surviving gunman involved in the Mumbai attacks, was of Pakistani origin; but the identity of the other nine terrorists killed in the incident is yet to be finally determined, although India has been claiming that they were Pakistanis.
Although the Bangladesh connection has emerged quite prominently in the investigations, there are also clear indications that some of the planning for the attacks was done in Dubai and there is also an element of local Indian support. Investigators believe it would have been almost impossible to plan and execute an attack of this proportion and sophistication without the local Indian support — a fact India is shying away from.
The sources say that the two sets of questions given to India by Pakistan also touched this aspect. India has responded to only one set and that also indirectly through US Federal Bureau of Investigations (FBI), while reply to the second set of questions is awaited.
In a related development, the FBI is reported to have sought access from the Indian authorities to two militants, Fahim Arshad Ansari and Sabbauddin, who were arrested by Uttar Pradesh police some time between February and March last year for having made reconnaissance of several sensitive places and were later questioned for the Mumbai attacks.
The investigators also suggest that the attack may be remotely linked to Al Qaeda’s international terror network. It should be recalled that the HuJI-B, now being suspected of involvement in the attack, had been established in 1992 with material assistance and inspiration from Osama bin Laden’s International Islamic Front (IIF).
FIA-FBI cooperation
High-level exchange of notes between FBI and FIA, copies of which are available with Dawn, reveal that the two agencies had been actively cooperating in the Pakistani probe into the Mumbai attack.
Among other issues, the FIA had sought FBI’s assistance in getting information from Google Inc and Yahoo! regarding email accounts
deccanmujahideen@gmail.com and
drmoazam@ymail.com, used by the terrorists. The FBI was also requested information from Callphonex regarding the calls made or received by the attackers.
Why are the Pakistani authorities doing this? Instead of tackling those scumbags directly, why point fingers at others and try to pass the blame?
~Moriarty
ps: sorry for the typo in the title.
